For the next few hours Percival found life not worth living.  He sat on the hot deck in solitary state, gloved in white chamois, with a newspaper over his white-clad knees, engaged in the forlorn hope of trying to keep clean while the ship was coaling.  Finding this an impossibility, he took refuge in the deserted-writing-room, where all the port-holes were closed and the air as dead as that of an Egyptian tomb.

Satirical letters home were Percival’s chief diversion.  In them he expressed his unqualified disapproval of the Western Hemisphere.  The assurance that they would be read by an adoring group of feminine relatives gave wing to an imagination that was not wont to soar.  Today, however, inspiration was lacking.  On opening the drawer of the first desk he came to, he found a letter half begun which had evidently been thrust there suddenly and forgotten.  Across the top of the page was written: 

“My darling H-----”

Percival closed the drawer hurriedly.  The conjunction of the letter H with that particular adjective started echoes.  He circled the room in search of a desk not haunted by epistolatory ghosts.

“Particularly asinine brand of pen!” he exclaimed in disgust.  “Must have been used for a corkscrew!”

Corkscrews changed the current of his thought into a more pleasant channel.  But even the mild consolation thus suggested was denied him.  The smoking-room was closed.  He wandered disconsolately to his state-room and, flinging himself on the narrow sofa, stared at the ceiling.  Every fiber of his being shrieked for England and for the revivifying warmth of adulation.

His mind dwelt longingly upon Hascombe Hall and the acres of parkland, moorland, and farmland that were its inheritance.  Then he thought bitterly upon that paragon of perfection who had caused his banishment.  How completely she would have filled the role of mistress of that noble hall!  He pictured her in irreproachable toilets, pouring tea in the east drawing-room, and receiving her guests with the exact shade of warmth that their social positions demanded.

As he recalled her manner of cool distinction and her polished, impersonal phrases, another feminine figure dared to flit between him and this lady of manifold merit.  No sooner would he indignantly banish her image than she would come dancing back, a gay little figure, with too much color in her checks and too much daring in her eyes.

“Why don’t you let yourself have a good time?” she had asked, and the question repeated itself now with maddening insistence.  Was he, who had always had everything, now missing something—­something that other people had?

When two bells sounded he reluctantly went below for lunch.  The prospect of a tete-a-tete with the captain was anything but pleasant.  He understood about half that the officer said, and with that half he usually disagreed.  His first remark was unfortunate: