As for Mrs. Nevin, until this instant she had been nearly as unaware of Ariel as Ariel supposed her to be. She had looked at her once or twice in the beginning, to wonder whether it was a child, a girl or a woman who occupied the neighboring chair, but quickly decided that such speculation was waste of time since the one thing certain was that Ariel’s age didn’t matter, since she was obviously—nobody. From that decision she had returned to social obliviousness, lying back for hours at a time, wrapped up preciously by her eager cabin steward in two fur-lined rugs, which could not have been hired for the passage but must be her own expensive property, following with absorption the fine print of a thick novel by some one named Aldous Huxley. Now and then she would lift languid but brilliant eyes and gaze for a while at the flying sea. That was all, for after the first half hour on board she had not thought it worth her while to waste that brilliant languid gaze on any other fellow-passenger more than on Ariel. But now she remained standing by Ariel’s chair, as though with some intention, and Ariel had finally to look up and meet, for the first time, in a direct exchange of glance, those brilliant, mahogany-colored eyes set wide apart under their strongly arched coppery brows, and it was, without doubt, a breathtaking moment. But it was the steward who was speaking, and his tone was seriously accusatory. “You are occupying the lady’s chair.” He was right. In the excitement of at last being almost in, so near the landing, Ariel had neglected to make sure of her own name—Ariel Clare—on the slip of pink cardboard stuck into the holder on the chair’s back. “I’m sorry,” she muttered, rose and was off like a bird. The steward’s eyelids just flickered as she brushed past him in exquisite, smooth flight. But the flicker was not because the steward had recognized that the nondescript, pale, young girl had turned exquisite with motion. He blinked merely because her decision to depart and the departure had been so strangely, almost weirdly, simultaneous. “Tuck it in at the foot more, please. Very well. That will do. Thank you.” Ariel, out by the deck rail, heard Mrs. Nevin’s low, but carrying voice directing and dismissing her eager slave. “It was unkind and perfectly needless,” she thought. “Any chair would have done her just as well for the next few minutes until we land. It doesn’t matter, though. I won’t care.” But she decided to go for a last time up to the sun deck. She could watch the boat docking from there just as well—better than from here—and discover her father’s friend among the crowds on the dock just as easily. She was through with deck chairs and pink cards and haughty neighbors, for this voyage, anyway. But she wished she could wipe out from her memory forever those brilliant, indifferent eyes.