four middle-aged, rather shy and awkward, on its fringe. In its centre
two women in slender tailor-made suits and motor veils, looking like
bored uninterested travellers used to the adventure.

They were talking to a little man in shabby tweeds and an olive-green
velvet hat too small for his head. His smooth, innocent pink face carried
its moustache like an accident, a mistake. Once, when he turned, she met
the arched stare of small china-blue eyes; it passed over her without
seeing, cold, dreamy, indifferent.

She glanced again at his women. The tall one drew you every time by her
raking eyes, her handsome, arrogant face, the gesture of her small head,
alert and at the same time set, the predatory poise of an enormous bird.
But the other one was--rather charming. Her features had a curious, sweet
bluntness; her eyes were decorations, deep-set blue in the flushed gold
of her sunburn. The little man straddled as he talked to them, bobbing
forward now and then, with a queer jerking movement from his hips.

She wondered what they were and decided that they were part of the
Commission for Relief in Belgium, bound for Ostend.

All those people had the look that John had, of having found what they
had wanted, of being satisfied, appeased. Even Sutton had it, lying on
the top of his sadness, like a light. They felt precisely as she was
feeling--all those people.

And through her wonder she remained aware of John Conway as he walked the
deck, passing and passing in front of her.

She got up and walked with him.