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For the last rubber or two the thought of Edith had obsessed him, her hand on the rail as he had kissed it, her cool eyes that were at once so wise and so ignorant, her lithe body in the short skirt and middy blouse. He found her more alluring, so attired, than she had been in the scant costume of what to him was always “the show.”

He pondered on that during all of a dummy hand, sitting low in his chair with his feet thrust far under the table. The show business was going to the bad. Why? Because nobody connected with it knew anything about human nature. He formulated a plan, compounded of liquor and real business acumen, of dressing a chorus, of suggesting the feminine form instead of showing it, of veiling it in chiffons of soft colours and sending a draft of air from electric fans in the wings to set the chiffons in motion.

“Like the Aurora,” he said to himself. “Only not so beefy. Ought to be a hit. Pretty? It will be the real thing!”

The thought of Edith in such a costume, playing like a dryad over the stage, stayed with him when the dummy hand had been played and he had been recalled to the game by a thump on the shoulder. Edith in soft, pastel-coloured chiffons, dancing in bare feet to light string music. A forest setting, of course. Pan. A goat or two. All that sort of thing.

On his way down to his cabin he passed her door. He went on, hesitated, came back and knocked.

Now Edith had not been able to sleep. Her thrifty soul, trained against waste, had urged her not to fling her cigarettes overboard, but to smoke them.

“And then never again,” she said solemnly.

The result was that she could not get to sleep. Blanketed to the chin she lay in her bunk, reading. The book had been Mabel’s farewell offering, a thing of perverted ideals, or none, of cheap sentiment, of erotic thought overlaid with words. The immediate result of it, when she yawned at last and turned out the light over her bed, was a new light on the boy.

“Little prig!” she said to herself, and stretched her round arms luxuriously above her head.

Then Lethway rapped. She sat up and listened. Then, grumbling, she got out and opened the door an inch or two. The lights were low outside and her own cabin dark. But she knew him.

“Are we chased?” she demanded. In the back of her mind, fear of pursuit by a German submarine was dogging her across the Atlantic.

“Sure we are!” he said. “What are you so stingy about the door for?”

She recognised his condition out of a not inconsiderable experience and did her best to force the door shut, but he put his foot over the sill and smiled.

“Please go away, Mr. Lethway.”

“I’ll go if you’ll kiss me good night.”

She calculated the situation, and surrendered. There was nothing else to do. But when she upturned her face he slipped past her and into the room. Just inside the door, swinging open and shut with every roll of the ship, he took her in his arms and kissed her, not once but many times.

She did not lose her head. She had an arm free and she rang the bell. Then she jerked herself loose.

“I have rung for the stewardess,” she said furiously. “If you are here when she comes I’ll ask for help.”

“You young devil!” was all he said, and went, slamming the door behind him. His rage grew as he reached his own cabin. Damn the girl, anyhow! He had not meant anything. Here he was, spending money he might never get back to give her a chance, and she called the stewardess because he kissed her!

As for the girl, she went back to bed. For a few moments sheer rage kept her awake. Then youth and fatigue triumphed and she fell asleep. Her last thought was of the boy, after all. “He wouldn’t do a thing like that,” she reflected. “He’s a gentleman. He’s the real thing. He’s—-“