Rawson-Clew blew a smoke-ring into the air; he was smiling a little.

“How old are you?” he said.  “Twenty?  Almost twenty-one, is it?  And until you were sixteen you knocked about a bit?  Sixteen is too young to come much across the natural man—­not the artful dodging man, or the man of civilisation, but the natural, primitive man, own blood relation to Adam and the king of the Cannibal Islands.  You may meet him by and by, and if you do he may surprise you; he is full of surprises—­he rather surprises himself, that is, if his local habitat is ordinarily an educated, decent person.”

“You have not got a natural man,” Julia said shortly; she was annoyed, without quite knowing why, by his manner.

“Have I not?  Quite likely; certainly, he has never bothered me, but I should not like to count on him.  Since we have got to personalities, may I say that you have got a natural woman, and plenty of her; also a marked taste for the works of the machine, in preference to the face usually presented to the company?”

“The works are the only interesting part; I don’t care for the drawing-room side of things; they are cultivated, but they are too much on the skin.  I would much rather be a stoker, or an engineer, than sit on deck all day and talk about Florentine art, and the Handel Festival, and Egyptology, and the gospel of Tolstoy, and play cricket and quoits, and dance a little, and sing a little, and flirt a little, ever so nicely.  Oh, there are lots of girls who can do all those things, and do them equally well; I know a few who can, well off, well-bred girls—­you must know a great many.  They are clever to begin with, and they are taught that way; it is a perfect treat to meet them and watch them, but I never want to imitate them, even if I could—­and there is no danger of that.  I would rather be in the engine-room, with my coat off, a bit greasy and very profane, and doing something.  There would be more flesh and blood there, even if it were a bit grubby; I believe I’m more at home with people who can do—­well, what’s necessary, even if it is not exactly nice.”

Rawson-Clew knew exactly the kind of woman she had described for the deck—­he met them often; charming creatures, far as the poles asunder from the girl who spoke of them; he liked them—­in moderation, and in their place, much as his forebears of fifty years ago had liked theirs, the delicate, sensitive creatures of that era.  He had never regarded Julia in that light; he found her certainly more entertaining as a companion, though also very far short of the standard as a woman and an ornament.

“The people in the engine-room,” he observed, “would certainly be more useful in an emergency; still, life is not made up entirely of emergencies.”

“No,” Julia answered; “and in between times such people are better not on show—­I know that; that is why I do not care for the drawing-room side of things, I don’t know enough to shine in them.”