Breitmann continued on, oblivious to all things save his cogitations.  He swung round the bridge.  He believed that he and Cathewe could henceforth proceed on parallel lines, and there was much to be grateful for.  Cathewe was quiet but deep; and he, Breitmann, had knocked about among that sort and knew that they were to be respected.  In all, he had made only one serious blunder.  He should never have permitted the vision of a face to deter him.  He should have taken the things from the safe and vanished.  It had not been, a matter of compunction.  And yet . . .  Ah, he was human, whatever his dream might be; and he loved this American girl with all his heart and mind.  It was not lawless love, but it was ruthless.  When the time was ripe he would speak.  Only a little while now to wait.  The course had smoothed out, the sailing was easy.  The man in the chimney no longer bothered him.  Whoever and whatever he was, he had not shot his bolt soon enough.

Hildegarde von Mitter.  He stopped against the rail.  The yacht was burying her nose now, and the white drift from her cut-water seemed strangely luminous as it swirled obliquely away in the fading twilight.  Hildegarde von Mitter.  Was she to be the flaw in the chain?  No, no; there should be no regret; he had steeled his heart against any such weakness.  She had been necessary, and he would be a fool to pause over a bit of sentimentality.  Her appearance had disorganized his nerves, that was all.  Peering into his watch he found that he had only half an hour before dinner.  And it may be added that he dressed with singular care.

So did Fitzgerald, for that matter.

It took Cathewe just as long, but he did not make two or three selections of this or that before finding what he wanted.  He was engrossed most of the time in the sober contemplation of the rubber flooring or the running sea outside the port-hole.

And this night Hildegarde von Mitter was meditating on the last throw for her hopes.  She determined to cast once more the full sun of her beauty into the face of the man she loved; and if she failed to win, the fault would not be hers.  Why could she not tear out this maddening heart of hers and fling it to the sea?  Why could she not turn it toward the man who loved her?  Why, why?  Why should God make her so unhappy?  Why such injustice?  Why this twisted interlacing of lives?  And yet, amid all these futile seekings, with subconscious deftness her hands went on with their appointed work.  Never again would the splendor of her beauty burn as it did this night.

Laura, alone among them all, went serenely about her toilet.  She was young, and love had not yet spread its puzzle before her feet.

As for the others, they were on the far side of the hill, whence the paths are smooth and gentle and the prospect is peacefulness and the retrospect is dimly rosal.  They dressed as they had done those twenty odd years, plainly.