in afternoon dress,
the colours of the intermediate tints of the rainbow--expressions
celestial. It is the witching hour before changing from one costume to
the other, after afternoon tea and just before dressing for dinner. To
the right you may observe an Ayah spoiling some young Britons.[3] You
see in the background a golden sunset on a wine red sea, and our lady
artist, a pupil from Juliens; she is gazing out at the departing
glory.... After sundown the decks are empty, for the people are below
dressing and at dinner; towards nightfall they become alive again with
ladies in evening dresses with delicate scarves and laces, promenading
to and fro--a difficult thing to do in such a crowd. One moment they are
dark shadowy forms against the southern night sky, then they are all
aglow in the lights from the music-room windows and the ports of the
deck cabins.

[3] Make it Anglo Saxons, if you like!

[Illustration]

"The-most-beautiful-lady-in-the-ship," in dark muslin, and the
stalwart-man stand near us to-night; they are in half-light, leaning
against the rail, looking out into the darkness. I wished Whistler
might have seen them; he alone could have caught the soft night
colours--the black so velvety and colourful, blurred into the dark blue
of the night sky, with never the suggestion of an outline, and just one
touch of subdued warm colour on the bend of her neck. Sometimes her
scarf floats lightly across his sleeve and rests, and floats away again.
I suppose they talk of--the weather, and repeat themselves in the dear
old set terms. That is why nature is more interesting than man, it never
repeats itself or displays an effect for more than a minute. Five men
out of any six on board, I believe, would make a fair copy of the
conversation of these two, but only one man who has lived in our times
could have made a fist at that effect of faint lamp-light and fainter
moonlight on the black of the coat against the deep blue-black of the
star spangled southern sky. Only the "Master" could have got the
delicacy and movement of the faintly sea-green veil that sometimes lifts
on the warm breeze and floats an instant across the sky and the
broadcloth; he would have got the innermost delicacy of colour form
purely and simply, without an inch, of conventional paint or catch-penny
sentiment.

CHAPTER VII

I believe this is the 5th. These 'chits' help one to remember dates;
they are little cards presented you when you