but the Second says, 'Na, na.
He'll never go back to Grangemouth,' and Chief says, 'He'll get a job
all right, all right.' Well, I was busy enough with my own concerns,
and, as usual, there was a-plenty to do on the _Corydon_; but one
evening I was up at Cully's Hotel talking to Miss Bevan, when in walks a
smart, tidy-looking man of, say, forty-five, and calls for a bottle of
Bass. I wouldn't have given him more than a passing glance if he hadn't
looked me in the eye. 'Eh, lad,' says he. 'Will ye have a drink?'
'Croasan?' I said. 'Ah, it's me,' says he. 'Ah'm away the morn in yon
big turret.'

"I was that astonished I couldn't reply, and he drank up his beer and
went out with a wave of the hand. Miss Bevan asked me if I knew him.
'Sure,' I said, 'but he was old and grey three days ago.' It was my
first experience of a sea-faker. He'd been up to Cardiff, had a Turkish
bath, hair-cut and shave, and the barber had dyed his hair and
moustache. Then he'd gone round to the offices and eventually got a
job. Of course, the first green sea that went over him would add twenty
years to his age, but he'd be signed on then. The Chief laughed when I
told him. 'And you'll see him in Genoa,' he says; 'yon turret steamer's
goin' there too,' I did see him. In a way, he introduced me to my wife."

Mr. Carville paused and struck a match. Bill's head appeared at the
window.

"Oh!" she said, "I thought you were never coming to it!"

He proceeded, carefully putting the burnt match on the window-sill and
blowing great clouds.

"The run to Genoa from the Tyne," he said, "takes a fortnight. It was
during that voyage that I began to see how I stood with regard to
Gladys. I suppose you read Ibsen? I used to, on the _Corydon_, and one
of the most remarkable of his plays, in my opinion, is _Love's Comedy_.
You remember the moral of that play was that a man should never marry a
girl he is madly in love with. It sounds wicked if you put it that way,
but old Ibsen was right. He knew, as I knew, that a young man may be in
love with a girl who is not suited to him. He knew that there isn't much
difference between that sort of love and hate. He knew that you can have
a contempt for a girl and her ideals and yet love her. That sort of love
is like those big thin bowls they showed me in Japan--beautiful,
expensive and awful frail--no use at all for domestic purposes. I
thought this out on the voyage to Genoa, and put Gladys, so to speak, on
a shelf,