no more than he did the rest of the
world. He liked Julia quite as well as he liked me, and he liked me quite
as well as he liked any of the women to whom he would be fitfully
agreeable upon the voyage. Once or twice, during each crossing, he did
his best and made himself very charming indeed, to keep his hand in,--for
the same reason that he kept a dummy keyboard in his stateroom, somewhere
down in the bowels of the boat. He practised all the small economies;
paid the minimum rate, and never took a deck chair, because, as Horace
was usually in the cardroom, he could sit in Horace's.

The three of them lay staring at the swell which was steadily growing
heavier. Both men had covered themselves with rugs, after dutifully
bundling up Miss Julia. As I walked back and forth on the deck, I was
struck by their various degrees of in-expressiveness. Opaque brown eyes,
almond-shaped and only half open; wolfish green eyes, close-set and
always doing something, with a crooked gleam boring in this direction or
in that; watery grey eyes, like the thick edges of broken skylight glass:
I would have given a great deal to know what was going on behind each
pair of them.

These three were sitting there in a row because they were all woven into
the pattern of one large and rather splendid life. Each had a bond, and
each had a grievance. If they could have their will, what would they do
with the generous, credulous creature who nourished them, I wondered? How
deep a humiliation would each egotism exact? They would scarcely have
harmed her in fortune or in person (though I think Miss Julia looked
forward to the day when Cressida would "break" and could be mourned
over),--but the fire at which she warmed herself, the little secret
hope,--the illusion, ridiculous or sublime, which kept her going,--that
they would have stamped out on the instant, with the whole Garnet pack
behind them to make extinction sure. All, except, perhaps, Miletus
Poppas. He was a vulture of the vulture race, and he had the beak of one.
But I always felt that if ever he had her thus at his mercy,--if ever he
came upon the softness that was hidden under so much hardness, the warm
credulity under a life so dated and scheduled and "reported" and
generally exposed,--he would hold his hand and spare.

The weather grew steadily rougher. Miss Julia at last plucked Poppas by
the sleeve and indicated that she wished to be released from her
wrappings. When she disappeared, the