'Well, yes--call it that,' I said, smiling.

'Did you know him so well?'

My smile became a laugh and I said--'You are not easy to make speeches
to.'

'I hate speeches!' The words came from her lips with a violence that
surprised me; they were loud and hard. But before I had time to wonder
at it she went on--'Shall you know him when you see him?'

'Perfectly, I think.' Her manner was so strange that one had to notice
it in some way, and it appeared to me the best way was to notice it
jocularly; so I added, 'Shan't you?'

'Oh, perhaps you'll point him out!' And she walked quickly away. As I
looked after her I had a singular, a perverse and rather an embarrassed
sense of having, during the previous days, and especially in speaking to
Jasper Nettlepoint, interfered with her situation to her loss. I had a
sort of pang in seeing her move about alone; I felt somehow responsible
for it and asked myself why I could not have kept my hands off. I had
seen Jasper in the smoking-room more than once that day, as I passed it,
and half an hour before this I had observed, through the open door,
that he was there. He had been with her so much that without him she had
a bereaved, forsaken air. It was better, no doubt, but superficially it
made her rather pitiable. Mrs. Peck would have told me that their
separation was gammon; they didn't show together on deck and in the
saloon, but they made it up elsewhere. The secret places on shipboard
are not numerous; Mrs. Peck's 'elsewhere' would have been vague and I
know not what license her imagination took. It was distinct that Jasper
had fallen off, but of course what had passed between them on this
subject was not so and could never be. Later, through his mother, I had
_his_ version of that, but I may remark that I didn't believe it. Poor
Mrs. Nettlepoint did, of course. I was almost capable, after the girl
had left me, of going to my young man and saying, 'After all, do return
to her a little, just till we get in! It won't make any difference after
we land.' And I don't think it was the fear he would tell me I was an
idiot that prevented me. At any rate the next time I passed the door of
the smoking-room I saw that he had left it. I paid my usual visit to
Mrs. Nettlepoint that night, but I troubled her no further about Miss
Mavis. She had made up her mind that everything was smooth and settled
now, and it seemed to me that I had worried her and that she had worried
herself enough. I lef