wind and to walk a deck that heaved and dipped and shuddered
beneath his feet; but he had not expected to have Ann's company
on such an evening. But she had come out of the saloon entrance,
her small face framed in a hood and her slim body shapeless
beneath a great cloak, and joined him in his walk.

Jimmy was in a mood of exaltation. He had passed the last few
days in a condition of intermittent melancholy, consequent on the
discovery that he was not the only man on board the _Atlantic_ who
desired the society of Ann as an alleviation of the tedium of an
ocean voyage. The world, when he embarked on this venture, had
consisted so exclusively of Ann and himself that, until the ship
was well on its way to Queenstown, he had not conceived the
possibility of intrusive males forcing their unwelcome attentions
on her. And it had added bitterness to the bitter awakening that
their attentions did not appear to be at all unwelcome. Almost
immediately after breakfast on the very first day, a creature with
a small black moustache and shining teeth had descended upon Ann
and, vocal with surprise and pleasure at meeting her again--he
claimed, damn him!, to have met her before at Palm Beach, Bar
Harbor, and a dozen other places--had carried her off to play an
idiotic game known as shuffle-board. Nor was this an isolated
case. It began to be borne in upon Jimmy that Ann, whom he had
looked upon purely in the light of an Eve playing opposite his
Adam in an exclusive Garden of Eden, was an extremely well-known
and popular character. The clerk at the shipping-office had lied
absurdly when he had said that very few people were crossing on
the _Atlantic_ this voyage. The vessel was crammed till its sides
bulged, it was loaded down in utter defiance of the Plimsoll law,
with Rollos and Clarences and Dwights and Twombleys who had known