[Pg 36]

Staff dodged both by grace of discretion and good fortune, and having found his deck-chair, dropped into it with a sigh of content, composing himself for rest and thought. His world seemed very bright with promise, just then; he felt that, if he had acted on impetuous impulse, he had not acted unwisely: only a few more hours—then the pause at Queenstown—then the brief, seven-day stretch across the Atlantic to home and Alison Landis!

It seemed almost too good to be true. He all but purred with his content in the prospect.

Of course, he had a little work to do, but he didn’t mind that; it would help immensely to beguile the tedium of the voyage; and all he required in order to do it well was the moral courage to shut himself up for a few hours each day and to avoid as far as possible social entanglements....

At just about this stage in his meditations he was[Pg 37] somewhat rudely brought back to earth—or, more properly, to deck.

[Pg 37]

A voice shrieked excitedly: “Why, Mr. Staff!”

To be precise, it miscalled him “Stahf”: a shrill, penetrating, overcultivated, American voice making an attempt only semi-successful to cope with the broad vowels of modern English enunciation.

Staff looked up, recognised its owner, and said beneath his breath: “O Lord!”—his soul crawling with recognition. But nothing of this was discernible in the alacrity with which he jumped up and bent over a bony but bedizened hand.

“Mrs. Ilkington!” he said.

“R’ally,” said the lady, “the world is ve-ry small, isn’t it?”

She was a lean, angular, inordinately vivacious body whose years, which were many more than forty, were making a brave struggle to masquerade as thirty. She was notorious for her execrable taste in gowns and jewelry, but her social position was impregnable, and her avowed mission in life was to bring together Society (meaning the caste of money) with the Arts (meaning those humble souls content to sell their dreams for the wherewithal to sustain life).

Her passion for bromidioms always stupefied Staff—left him dazed and witless. In the present instance[Pg 38] he could think of nothing by way of response happier than that hoary banality: “This is indeed a surprise.”

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