perwood first saw her on board the Centurion one June morning, as
the ship lay at dock in New York. He and Aileen were en route for
Norway, she and her father and mother for Denmark and Switzerland. She
was hanging over the starboard rail looking at a flock of wide-winged
gulls which were besieging the port of the cook's galley. She was
musing soulfully--conscious (fully) that she was musing soulfully. He
paid very little attention to her, except to note that she was tall,
rhythmic, and that a dark-gray plaid dress, and an immense veil of gray
silk wound about her shoulders and waist and over one arm, after the
manner of a Hindu shawl, appeared to become her much. Her face seemed
very sallow, and her eyes ringed as if indicating dyspepsia. Her black
hair under a chic hat did not escape his critical eye. Later she and
her father appeared at the captain's table, to which the Cowperwoods
had also been invited.

Cowperwood and Aileen did not know how to take this girl, though she
interested them both. They little suspected the chameleon character of
her soul. She was an artist, and as formless and unstable as water.
It was a mere passing gloom that possessed her. Cowperwood liked the
semi-Jewish cast of her face, a certain fullness of the neck, her dark,
sleepy eyes. But she was much too young and nebulous, he thought, and
he let her pass. On this trip, which endured for ten days, he saw much
of her, in different moods, walking with a young Jew in whom she seemed
greatly interested, playing at shuffleboard, reading solemnly in a
corner out of the reach of the wind or spray, and usually looking
naive, preternaturally innocent, remote, dreamy. At other times she
seemed possessed of a wild animation, her eyes alight, her expression
vigorous, an intense glow in her soul. Once he saw her bent over a
small wood block, cutting a book-plate with a thin steel graving tool.

Because of Stephanie's youth and seeming unimportance, her lack of what
might be called compelling rosy charm, Aileen had become reasonably
friendly with the girl. Far subtler, even at her years, than Aileen,
Stephanie gathered a very good impression of the former, of her mental
girth, and how to take her. She made friends with her, made a
book-plate for her, made a sketch of her. She confided to Aileen that
in her own mind she was destined for the stage, if her parents would
permit; and Aileen invited her to see her husband's pictures on their
r