't think you would if you could,' Dacres remarked absently;
but the sea air, perhaps, enabled me to digest his thoughtlessness with
a smile.

'No,' I said, 'I am just as well pleased. I think a resemblance to me
would confuse me, often.'

There was a trace of scrutiny in Dacres's glance. 'Don't you find
yourself in sympathy with her?' he asked.

'My dear boy, I have seen her just twice in twenty-one years! You see,
I've always stuck to John.'

'But between mother and daughter--I may be old-fashioned, but I had an
idea that there was an instinct that might be depended on.'

'I am depending on it,' I said, and let my eyes follow the little blue
waves that chased past the hand-rail. 'We are making very good speed,
aren't we? Thirty-five knots since last night at ten. Are you in the
sweep?'

'I never bet on the way out--can't afford it. Am I old-fashioned?' he
insisted.

'Probably. Men are very slow in changing their philosophy about women. I
fancy their idea of the maternal relation is firmest fixed of all.'

'We see it a beatitude!' he cried.

'I know,' I said wearily, 'and you never modify the view.'

Dacres contemplated the portion of the deck that lay between us. His
eyes were discreetly lowered, but I saw embarrassment and speculation
and a hint of criticism in them.

'Tell me more about it,' said he.

'Oh, for heaven's sake don't be sympathetic!' I exclaimed. 'Lend me a
little philosophy instead. There is nothing to tell. There she is and
there I am, in the most intimate relation in the world, constituted
when she is twenty-one and I am forty.' Dacres started slightly at the
ominous word; so little do men realize that the women they like can ever
pass out of the constated years of attraction. 'I find the young
lady very tolerable, very creditable, very nice. I find the relation
atrocious. There you have it. I would like to break the relation into
pieces,' I went on recklessly, 'and throw it into the sea. Such things
should be tempered to one. I should feel it much less if she occupied
another cabin, and would consent to call me Elizabeth or Jane. It is not
as if I had been her mother always. One grows fastidious at forty--new
intimacies are only possible then on a basis of temperament--'

I paused; it seemed to me that I was making excuses, and I had not the
least desire in the world to do that.

'How awfully rough on the girl!' said Dacres Tottenham.

'That consideration has also occurred to me,'