ut whether she ever left it, and if so, at what
time of day. He could not mount guard in the long corridor; and
the stewardesses on the _Lithuania_ were mature, experienced and
uncommunicative women, their sole weakness being an occasional
tendency to imagine that they, and not the captain, were in supreme
charge of the steamer. However, Edward Henry did at last achieve his
desire. And on the third morning, at a little before six o'clock, he
met a muffled Isabel Joy on the D deck. The D deck was wet,
having just been swabbed; and a boat--chosen for that dawn's
boat-drill--ascended past them on its way from sea-level to the dizzy
boat-deck above; on the other side of an iron barrier, large crowds
of early-rising third-class passengers were standing and talking and
staring at the oblong slit of sea which was the only prospect offered
by the D deck; it was the first time that Edward Henry aboard had
set eyes on a steerage passenger; with all the conceit natural to the
occupant of a costly state-room, he had unconsciously assumed that he
and his like had sole possession of the ship.

Isabel responded to his greeting in a very natural way. The sharp
freshness of the summer morning at sea had its tonic effect on both of
them; and as for Edward Henry, he lunged and plunged at once into the
subject which alone preoccupied and exasperated him. She did not seem
to resent it.

"You'd have the satisfaction of helping on a thing that all your
friends say ought to be helped," he argued. "Nobody but you can do it.
Without you there'll be a frost. You would make a lot of money, which
you could spend in helping on things of your own. And surely it isn't
the publicity that you're afraid of!"

"No," she agreed. "I'm not afraid of publicity." Her pale grey-blue
eyes shone as they regarded the secret dream that for her hung always
unseen in the air. And she had a strange, wistful, fragile, feminine
mien in her mannish costume.

"Well then--"

"But can't you see it's humiliating?" cried she, as if interested in
the argument.

"It's not humiliating to do something that you can do well--I know you
can do it well--and get a large salary for it, and make the success of
a big enterprise by it. If you knew the play--"

"I do know the play," she said. "We'd lots of us read it in manuscript
long ago."

Edward Henry was somewhat dashed by this information.

"Well, what do you think of it?"

"I think it's just splendid!" said she with en