“I thought you said he’d come back.”

“Young Nettlepoint?  Yes, I see he didn’t.  Miss Mavis then has given him half her dinner.”

“It’s very kind of her!  She has been engaged half her life.”

“Yes, but that will soon be over.”

“So I suppose—­as quick as ever we land.  Every one knows it on Merrimac Avenue,” Mrs. Peck pursued.  “Every one there takes a great interest in it.”

“Ah of course—­a girl like that has many friends.”

But my informant discriminated.  “I mean even people who don’t know her.”

“I see,” I went on:  “she’s so handsome that she attracts attention—­people enter into her affairs.”

Mrs. Peck spoke as from the commanding centre of these.  “She used to be pretty, but I can’t say I think she’s anything remarkable today.  Anyhow, if she attracts attention she ought to be all the more careful what she does.  You had better tell her that.”

“Oh it’s none of my business!” I easily made out, leaving the terrible little woman and going above.  This profession, I grant, was not perfectly attuned to my real idea, or rather my real idea was not quite in harmony with my profession.  The very first thing I did on reaching the deck was to notice that Miss Mavis was pacing it on Jasper Nettlepoint’s arm and that whatever beauty she might have lost, according to Mrs. Peck’s insinuation, she still kept enough to make one’s eyes follow her.  She had put on a crimson hood, which was very becoming to her and which she wore for the rest of the voyage.  She walked very well, with long steps, and I remember that at this moment the sea had a gentle evening swell which made the great ship dip slowly, rhythmically, giving a movement that was graceful to graceful pedestrians and a more awkward one to the awkward.  It was the loveliest hour of a fine day, the clear early evening, with the glow of the sunset in the air and a purple colour on the deep.  It was always present to me that so the waters ploughed by the Homeric heroes must have looked.  I became conscious on this particular occasion moreover that Grace Mavis would for the rest of the voyage be the most visible thing in one’s range, the figure that would count most in the composition of groups.  She couldn’t help it, poor girl; nature had made her conspicuous—­important, as the painters say.  She paid for it by the corresponding exposure, the danger that people would, as I had said to Mrs. Peck, enter into her affairs.

Jasper Nettlepoint went down at certain times to see his mother, and I watched for one of these occasions—­on the third day out—­and took advantage of it to go and sit by Miss Mavis.  She wore a light blue veil drawn tightly over her face, so that if the smile with which she greeted me rather lacked intensity I could account for it partly by that.

“Well, we’re getting on—­we’re getting on,” I said cheerfully, looking at the friendly twinkling sea.