XI.

At lunch, in the faded excitement of their first meeting, the people at
the Marches' table did not renew the premature intimacy of their
breakfast talk. Mrs. March went to lie down in her berth afterwards, and
March went on deck without her. He began to walk to and from the barrier
between the first and second cabin promenades; lingering near it, and
musing pensively, for some of the people beyond it looked as intelligent
and as socially acceptable, even to their clothes, as their pecuniary
betters of the saloon.

There were two women, a mother and daughter, whom he fancied to be
teachers, by their looks, going out for a little rest, or perhaps for a
little further study to fit them more perfectly for their work. They
gazed wistfully across at him whenever he came up to the barrier; and he
feigned a conversation with them and tried to convince them that the
stamp of inferiority which their poverty put upon them was just, or if
not just, then inevitable. He argued with them that the sort of barrier
which here prevented their being friends with him, if they wished it, ran
invisibly through society everywhere but he felt ashamed before their
kind, patient, intelligent faces, and found himself wishing to excuse the
fact he was defending. Was it any worse, he asked them, than their not
being invited to the entertainments of people in upper Fifth Avenue? He
made them own that if they were let across that barrier the whole second
cabin would have a logical right to follow; and they were silenced. But
they continued to gape at him with their sincere, gentle eyes whenever he
returned to the barrier in his walk, till he could bear it no longer, and
strolled off toward the steerage.