recently stood on a
heeling deck and shouted orders to cutlassed seamen, and he was staring
at the tumult as if he regarded noise as a mutiny of inferiors against
his preference for calm. By his side a short-sighted steward bent
interminably over his ticket. "The silly gowk!" fumed Ellen. "Can the
woman not read? It looks so inefficient, and I want him to think well of
the movement." Presently, with a suave and unimpatient gesture, he took
his ticket away from the peering woman and read her the number. "I like
him!" said Ellen. "There's many would have snapped at her for that."

She liked, too, the way he got to his seat without disturbing his
neighbours, and the neathandedness with which he took off his cap and
oilskins and fell to wiping a pair of motor-goggles while his eyes
maintained a dark glance, too intense to flash, on the women on the
platform. "How long he is looking at them!" she said to herself
presently. "No doubt he is taken up by Mrs. Mark Lyle. I believe such
men are very susceptible to beautiful women. I hope," she continued with
sudden bitterness, "he is as susceptible to spiritual beauty and will
take heed of Mrs. Ormiston!" With that, she tried herself to look at
Mrs. Ormiston, but found she could not help watching the clever way he
went on cleaning the goggles while his eyes and attention were fixed
otherwhere. There was something ill-tempered about his movements which
made her want to go dancingly across and say teasing things to him. Yet
when a smile at some private thought suggested by the speech broke his
attention, and he began to look round the hall, she was filled with
panic at the prospect of meeting his eyes. She did not permit herself
irrational emotions, so she pretended that what she was feeling was not
terror of this man, but the anger of a feminist against all men, and
stared fiercely at the platform, crying out silently: "What have I to do
with this man? I will have nothing to do with any man until I am great.
Then I suppose I will have to use them as pawns in my political and
financial intrigues."

Through this gaping at the client from Rio she had missed the chairman's
speech. Dr. Munro had just sat down. Her sensible square face looked red
and stern, as though she had just been obliged to smack someone, and
from the tart brevity of the applause it was evident that that was what
she had been doing. This rupture of the bright occasion struck Ellen,
who found herself suddenly given