here a man with a voice like a rook was
cawing:

"A mother was chay-sing her boy round the room,
She was chay-sing her boy round the room"

over and over again. Somewhere at the end of a ventilator shaft a man
was polishing boots; he was swearing monotonously, between each rub of
his brush, using a list of twelve words beginning with "blast" uttered
very softly and increasing in volume of sound and violence of meaning at
the twelfth word, when he would start pianissimo again. Marcella's eyes
closed; she was not asleep, she was thinking very vividly of Louis, but
all the murmur of sounds about her intruded on her consciousness, making
clear thought impossible. The peculiar languor of shipboard life seized
upon her mind and her body: when she went below both were partly
anaesthetized; her feet scarcely felt the boards of the deck; her
fingers were scarcely conscious of the letters and books she held. Her
eyes and her mind took in the returning passengers dully.

"You look half asleep, kid," said Diddy with sparkling eyes. "We didn't
half have a day of it! Young Bill and Mr. Winkle both got shore leaf,
and Mr. Winkle knew a man who keeps a little cafe. He was once chef
where Mr. Winkle was assistant chef in an hotel. My, we didn't half have
a tuck in! Oysters and funny things in French, and chicken done up with
jam, and ices. We went to Pompey in the afternoon, but I couldn't move,
I was that stuffed up! My, it was a day and a half! Where did you get
to?"

"Oh, just about with Jimmy."

"Where's your young chap?" asked Diddy in surprise.

Marcella stared at her and flushed. The schoolmaster came up to her and
stood silent beside her. He was very full of Naples. His shoes were
dustless, though everyone else was covered in the fine, impalpable
powdery dust of Naples. His high collar was spotless, his coat
incredibly black. He looked irresistibly as if he had been lay-reading.

"I was hoping that I might have had the pleasure of your company during
my journeyings to-day, Miss Lashcairn," he began after a little cough.
"But I was--er--afraid to intrude."

"I stayed on board with Jimmy," she explained. "Did you have a good
time?"

"One cannot have a good time in the tomb of past splendours," he said
slowly. "Imperial Cesar dead and turned to clay stopping a hole to keep
the wind away is indeed a tragedy to a sensitive mind. But to see
Imperial Pompeii desecrated by ginger-beer bottles, cigarette packets
and spent mat