Audrey blushed deeply at the sign of Mrs. Moncreiff, for she was Mrs. Moncreiff.  Behind the veil, and with the touch of white in her toque, she might have been any age up to twenty-eight or so.  It would have been impossible to say that she was a young girl, that she was not versed in the world, that she had not the whole catechism of men at her finger-ends.  All who glanced at her glanced again—­with sympathy and curiosity; and the second glance pricked Audrey’s conscience, making her feel like a thief.  But her moods were capricious.  At one moment she was a thief, a clumsy fraud, an ignorant ninny, and a suitable prey for the secret police; and at the next she was very clever, self-confident, equal to the situation, and enjoying the situation more than she had ever enjoyed anything, and determined to prolong the situation indefinitely.

The cabin was very spacious, yet not more so than was proper, considering that the rent of it came to about sixpence a minute.  There was room, even after all the packages were stowed, for both of them to lie down.  But instead of lying down they eagerly inspected the little abode.  They found a lavatory basin with hot and cold water taps, but no hot water and no cold water, no soap and no towels.  And they found a crystal water-bottle, but it was empty.  Then a steward came and asked them if they wanted anything, and because they were miserable poltroons they smiled and said “No.”  They were secretly convinced that all the other private cabins, inhabited by titled persons and by financiers, were superior to their cabin, and that the captain of the steamer had fobbed them off with an imitation of a real cabin.

Then it was that Miss Ingate, who since Charing Cross had been a little excited by a glimpsed newspaper contents-bill indicating suffragette riots that morning, perceived, through the open door of the cabin, a most beautiful and most elegant girl, attired impeccably in that ritualistic garb of travel which the truly cosmopolitan wear on combined rail-and-ocean journeys and on no other occasions.  It was at once apparent that the celestial creature had put on that special hat, that special veil, that special cloak, and those special gloves because she was deeply aware of what was correct, and that she would not put them on again until destiny took her again across the sea, and that if destiny never did take her again across the sea never again would she show herself in the vestments, whose correctness was only equalled by their expensiveness.

The young woman, however, took no thought of her impressive clothes.  She was existing upon quite another plane.  Miss Ingate, preoccupied by the wrongs and perils of her sex, and momentarily softened out of her sardonic irony, suspected that they might be in the presence of a victim of oppression or neglect.  The victim lay Half-prone upon the hard wooden seat against the ship’s rail.  Her dark eyes opened piteously at times, and her exquisite profile, surmounted by the priceless hat all askew, made a silhouette now against the sea and now against the distant white cliffs of Albion, according to the fearful heaving of the ship.  Spray occasionally dashed over her.  She heeded it not.  A few feet farther off she would have been sheltered by a weather-awning, but, clinging fiercely to the rail, she would not move.