“Wouldn’t you like to sit on this chair?” she said, and the young man looked up startled.

“You look so uncomfortable there.  This chair isn’t being used.  Won’t you sit down?”

“That’s very good of you.  I was getting a decided crick in my back,” he said, sitting down and wondering whether to go on reading or to entertain her.  Marcella looked at him; he was the epitome of propriety, the spirit of the Sabbath incarnate in his neat black suit, gold watch-chain and very high collar.

“I really asked you to sit here for quite a selfish reason,” she said.  “I want to know the meanings of some words that have just cropped up.  You look as if you know.”

The young man coughed and looked pleased.

“I am a schoolmaster,” he remarked.  “Probably I can—­”

“Inhibition?” she interrupted.

“Inhibition?” he said.  “That means ‘holding back.’  Latin ’habeo, I have’ or ‘I hold’ and ’in—­”

“Women have no inhibitions,” she repeated; “no power of holding back.”

She frowned, and decided to return to that later.  “Now philoprogenitive,” she said turning to him.  He stared at her, coughed again and held out his hand for the book.

“That’s rather a difficult book for a girl to be reading, isn’t it?” he said, glancing at the title page.  “Oh, Kraill the biologist?  Whatever makes you read that?  I thought girls read Mrs. Barclay and Charles Garvice.”

“I have not read any of their books yet,” she said.  “I read this book some time ago, and it seemed to me to hold the whole illumination of life.  But since I’ve been on this ship I’ve been in a muddle about things.  People are not a bit like I thought they would be.  I was awake hours last night trying to get right about it.”

“They’re not a very nice collection here—­in the steerage.  But the difference in fare between steerage and second is very considerable—­very considerable,” he sighed.  “My profession must take care of the financial aspect of life.”

Marcella felt that he was honest.  He was the first passenger who had admitted that he had not unlimited wealth.

“That’s refreshing.  Most of the people here want one to think they are disguised millionaires only travelling steerage to enquire into the ways of poorer folks.  And that’s part of my puzzle.  I want to know why these people are not a very nice collection.  Is my taste at fault?  Last night I raked out my ‘Golden Treasury’ and read about ’Blind misgivings of a creature roaming about in worlds not realized.’”

“You misquote,” he murmured. “‘Blank’ not ‘blind’ and ‘moving’ not ‘roaming.’”

She shrugged her shoulders.

“Of course,” he said with an air of depth and of conscious helpfulness, “the most difficult thing on earth—­and, I may remark, the most important—­is realization of one’s sphere, and one’s place in that sphere.  And our way of instructing the young in such realization is defective, defective to a degree at present.  Queerly enough I am just reading Tagore on ‘Realization.’  You know Tagore, of course?”