Your first sea funeral, Mr. Pathurst?

"Death at sea does not seem to affect you," I said bluntly.

"Not any more than on the land." She shrugged her shoulders. "So many
people die, you know. And when they are strangers to you . . . well,
what do you do on the land when you learn that some workers have been
killed in a factory you pass every day coming to town? It is the same on
the sea."

"It's too bad we are a hand short," I said deliberately.

It did not miss her. Just as deliberately she replied:

"Yes, isn't it? And so early in the voyage, too." She looked at me, and
when I could not forbear a smile of appreciation she smiled back.

"Oh, I know very well, Mr. Pathurst, that you think me a heartless
wretch. But it isn't that it's . . . it's the sea, I suppose. And yet,
I didn't know this man. I don't remember ever having seen him. At this
stage of the voyage I doubt if I could pick out half-a-dozen of the
sailors as men I had ever laid eyes on. So why vex myself with even
thinking of this stupid stranger who was killed by another stupid
stranger? As well might one die of grief with reading the murder columns
of the daily papers."

"And yet, it seems somehow different," I contended.

"Oh, you'll get used to it," she assured me cheerfully, and returned to
her sewing.

I asked her if she had read Moody's _Ship of Souls_, but she had not. I
searched her out further. She liked Browning, and was especially fond of
_The Ring and the Book_. This was the key to her. She cared only for
healthful literature--for the literature that exposits the vital lies of
life.

For instance, the mention of Schopenhauer produced smiles and laughter.
To her all the philosophers of pessimism were laughable. The red blood
of her would not permit her to take them seriously. I tried her out with
a conversation I had had with De Casseres shortly before leaving New
York. De Casseres, after tracing Jules de Gaultier's philosophic
genealogy back to Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, had concluded with the
proposition that out of their two formulas de Gaultier had constructed an
even profounder formula. The "Will-to-Live" of the one and the "Will-to-
Power" of the other were, after all, only parts of de Gaultier's supreme
generalization, the "Will-to-Illusion."

I flatter myself that even De Casseres would have been pleased with the
way I repeated his argument. And when I had concluded it, Miss West
promptly demanded if th