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Once on the long, covered piers, you have come into a ghostly country that is no longer Here and not yet There. Especially at night. There is a hazy yellow vault full of shouting, echoing voices. There is the rumble of trucks and the clump of trunks, the strident chatter of a crane and the first salt smell of the sea. You hurry through, even though there’s time. The past, the continent, is behind you; the future is that glowing mouth in the side of the ship; this dim turbulent alley is too confusedly the present.

Up the gangplank, and the vision of the world adjusts itself, narrows. One is a citizen of a commonwealth smaller than Andorra. One is no longer so sure of anything. Curiously unmoved the men at the purser’s desk, cell-like the cabin, disdainful the eyes of voyagers and their friends, solemn the officer who stands on the deserted promenade deck thinking something of his own as he stares at the crowd below. A last odd idea that one didn’t really have to come, then the loud, mournful whistles, and the thing–certainly not the boat, but rather a human idea, a frame of mind–pushes forth into the big dark night.

Adrian Smith, one of the celebrities on board–not a very great celebrity, but important enough to be bathed in flashlight by a photographer who had been given his name, but wasn’t sure what his subject ‘did’–Adrian Smith and his blonde wife, Eva, went up to the promenade deck, passed the melancholy ship’s officer, and, finding a quiet aerie, put their elbows on the rail.

‘We’re going!’ he cried presently, and they both laughed in ecstasy.’We’ve escaped. They can’t get us now.’

‘Who?’

He waved his hand vaguely at the civic tiara.

‘All those people out there. They’ll come with their posses and their warrants and list of crimes we’ve committed, and ring the bell at our door on Park Avenue and ask for the Adrian Smiths, but what ho! the Adrian Smiths and their children and nurse are off for France.’

‘You make me think we really have committed crimes.’

‘They can’t have you,’ he said frowning.’That’s one thing they’re after me about–they know I haven’t got any right to a person like you, and they’re furious. That’s one reason I’m glad to get away.’

‘Darling,’ said Eva.

She was twenty-six–five years younger than he. She was something precious to everyone who knew her.

‘I like this boat better than the Majesticor the Aquitania,’she remarked, unfaithful to the ships that had served their honeymoon.

‘It’s much smaller.’

‘But it’s very slick and it has all those little shops along the corridors. And I think the staterooms are bigger.’

‘The people are very formal–did you notice?–as if they thought everyone else was a card sharp. And in about four days half of them will be calling the other half by their first names.’

Four of the people came by now–a quartet of young girls abreast, making a circuit of the deck. Their eight eyes swept momentarily towards Adrian and Eva, and then swept automatically back, save for one pair which lingered for an instant with a little start. They belonged to one of the girls in the middle, who was, indeed, the only passenger of the four. She was not more than eighteen–a dark little beauty with the fine crystal gloss over her that, in brunettes, takes the place of a blonde’s bright glow.

‘Now, who’s that?’ wondered Adrian.’I’ve seen her before.’

‘She’s pretty,’ said Eva.

‘Yes.’ He kept wondering, and Eva deferred momentarily to his distraction; then, smiling up at him, she drew him back into their privacy.