gerous
except by dint of reckless corner-cutting. Captains of great ships
behave exactly like two hansom-drivers in the streets of London; they
think they can just shave past without grazing; and they DO shave past
nine times out of ten. The tenth time they run on the rocks through
sheer recklessness, and lose their vessel; and then, the newspapers
always ask the same solemn question--in childish good faith--how did
so experienced and able a navigator come to make such a mistake in his
reckoning? He made NO mistake; he simply tried to cut it fine, and cut
it too fine for once, with the result that he usually loses his own life
and his passengers. That's all. We who have been at sea understand that
perfectly."

Just at that moment another passenger strolled up and joined us--a
Bengal Civil servant. He drew his chair over by Hilda's, and began
discussing Mrs. Ogilvy's eyes and the first officer's flirtations. Hilda
hated gossip, and took refuge in generalities. In three minutes the talk
had wandered off to Ibsen's influence on the English drama, and we had
forgotten the very existence of the Isle of Ushant.

"The English public will never understand Ibsen," the newcomer said,
reflectively, with the omniscient air of the Indian civilian. "He is
too purely Scandinavian. He represents that part of the Continental
mind which is farthest removed from the English temperament. To him,
respectability--our god--is not only no fetish, it is the unspeakable
thing, the Moabitish abomination. He will not bow down to the golden
image which our British Nebuchadnezzar, King Demos, has made, and which
he asks us to worship. And the British Nebuchadnezzar will never get
beyond the worship of his Vishnu, respectability, the deity of the pure
and blameless ratepayer. So Ibsen must always remain a sealed book to
the vast majority of the English people."

"That is true," Hilda answered, "as to his direct influence; but don't
you think, indirectly, he is leavening England? A man so wholly out of
tune with the prevailing note of English life could only affect it, of
course, by means of disciples and popularisers--often even popularisers
who but dimly and distantly apprehend his meaning. He must be
interpreted to the English by English intermediaries, half Philistine
themselves, who speak his language ill, and who miss the greater part of
his message. Yet only by such half-hints--Why, what was that? I think I
saw something!"

Even as she utt