, or mistaken
another man's wife for your own, or disappeared altogether under a cloud
for a while, you could retrieve your honour, and, sinking at twenty-five
or thirty, could come up from out of the waters at thirty-five as
capable of enjoyment and almost as fresh as ever. But a woman does not
bear submersion. She is draggled ever afterwards. She must hide
everything by a life of lies, or she will get no admittance anywhere.
The man is rather the better liked because he has sown his wild oats
broadly. Of all these ladies dancing there, which dances the best? There
is not one who really knows how to dance.'

Chapter VI

Mrs. Smith

She had changed the conversation so suddenly, rushing off from that
great question as to the condition of women generally to the very
unimportant matter of the dancing powers of the ladies who were
manoeuvring before them, that Caldigate hardly knew how to travel with
her so quickly. 'They all dance well enough for ship dancing,' he
replied; 'but as to what you were saying about women----'

'No, Mr. Caldigate; they don't dance well enough for ship dancing.
Dancing, wherever it be done, should be graceful. A woman may at any
rate move her feet in accordance with time, and she need not skip, nor
prance, nor jump, even on board ship. Look at that stout lady.'

'Mrs. Callander?'

Everybody by this time knew everybody's name.

'If she is Mrs. Callander?'

Mrs. Smith, no doubt, knew very well that it was Mrs. Callander.

'Does not your ear catch separately the thud of her footfall every time
she comes to the ground?'

'She is fat, fair, and forty.'

'Fat enough;--and what she lacks in fairness may be added on to the
forty; but if she were less ambitious and had a glimmer of taste, she
might do better than that. You see that girl with the green scarf round
her? She is young and good-looking. Why should she spring about like a
bear on a hot iron?'

'You should go and teach them.'

'It is just what I should like; only they would not be taught; and I
should be stern, and tell them the truth.'

'Why don't you go and dance with them yourself?'

'I!'

'Why not? There is one second-class lady there?' This was true. For
though none of the men would have been admitted from the inferior rank
to join the superior, the rule of demarcation had so far been broken
that a pretty girl who was known to some of the first-class passengers
had been invited to come over the line and join