ave always to look for your musicians among
the second-class passengers. And now under the awning young and old were
standing up, and making themselves happy beneath the starlight and the
glimmer of the dozen ship-lamps which had been hung around. On board
ship there are many sources of joy of which the land knows nothing. You
may flirt and dance at sixty; and if you are awkward in the turn of a
valse, you may put it down to the motion of the ship. You need wear no
gloves, and may drink your soda-and-brandy without being ashamed of it.

It was not for John Caldigate to join the mazes of that dance, though he
would have liked it well, and was well fitted by skill and taste for
such exercise. But the ground was hallowed on which they trod, and
forbidden to him; and though there was probably not a girl or a dancing
married woman there who would not have been proud to stand up with Mr.
Caldigate of Folking, there was not one who would have dared to take the
hand of a second-class passenger. So he stood, just within his own
boundary, and looked and longed. Then there was a voice in his ear. 'Do
you dance, Mr. Caldigate?'

It was a very pleasant voice, low, but distinct and silvery, infinitely
better again than the gown; a voice so distinct and well-managed that it
would have been noticed for its peculiar sweetness if coming from any
high-bred lady. He turned round and found her face close to his. Why had
she come to speak to him when she must have perceived that he had
intentionally avoided her.

'I used to be very fond of dancing,' he said, 'but it is one of the
things that have gone away.'

'I, too, was fond of dancing; but, as you say, it has gone away. It will
come back to you, in half-a-dozen years, perhaps. It can never come back
to me. Things do come back to men.'

'Why more than to women?'

'You have a resurrection;--I mean here upon earth. We never have. Though
we live as long as you, the pleasure-seeking years of our lives are much
shorter. We burst out into full flowering early in our spring, but long
before the summer is over, we are no more than huddled leaves and thick
stalks.'

'Are you a thick stalk, Mrs. Smith?'

'Unfortunately, not. My flowers are gone while my stalk is still thin
and sensitive. And then women can't recuperate.'

'I don't quite know what that means.'

'Yes, you do. It is good English enough even for Cambridge by this time.
If you had made a false step, got into debt and ran away