One nursed indelicate and never-to-be-satisfied curiosities about her emotional divagations. She once confessed, in a tone of querulous austerity, that she 'lived only for the child.' Possibly this was the key. Beauty and Love, and even Life itself, as men understood them, were to her the shocking but inevitable conditions of attaining to an existence consecrated to her neat and toy-like ideal. I am only explaining how she impressed me. As you say, she was, and is, simply a respectable married woman. But respectable married women, when you live with them without being married to them, are sometimes very remarkable manifestations of human nature. "Yes, I used to watch that woman on the voyage home. I was full of curiosity about her. I was loth to believe in a human being so insensitive to what we usually call human emotions. There was difficulty about getting her ashore in Algiers. It was only when Jack said she would get smothered in coal-dust if she stayed that she consented to go at all. She came back with a very poor opinion of Africa. It appears that it was hot and they did not know at the café how to make tea. A mosquito had had the effrontery to bite Babs. I was informed of this momentous adventure after we had gone to sea again, though Mrs. Evans had been cultivating a certain evasion where I was concerned since our talk about Artemisia. She had sheered off from me and tried to pump Jack about the girl. He came to me, his bright brown eyes globular with the news. What did I know, eh? Missus was saying she'd heard there was something fishy about the gel. Not that he'd be surprised. It only showed, he went on, how particular a man had to be. Gel like that ought to be _married_. Mrs. Evans was very particular whom she had about. Always had been. I knew, of course, how carefully she'd been brought up. A lady. There was something about that gel ... no, he never could give it a name, but he didn't like it. Bad for the kid. Children _knew_. And they were the devil for picking things up. Here was Angelina, only the other night, getting him into a regular pickle because she'd heard him say 'damn' and brought it out plump in front of Mrs. Evans. Couldn't be too careful. Fancy a kid that age saying a thing like that--'Damn by-bye, damn by-bye!' Jack's eyes grew larger and more prominent. Mrs. Evans had been very upset when he had remarked irascibly that a ship was no place for a child anyway. No more it was. 'Fred'--(I could see this coming, mind you, a week before)--'Fred, my boy,' said he, 'I shall be glad when we get home. I can see it now. It's a mistake. I always said so when the commander brought his wife along.' It didn't do to take a woman away from where she belonged. She saw too much, as well. What did I think she said the other day? A fact. 'You and Mr. Spenlove don't seem to me to _do_ much.' Think of that! And sometimes he wondered if she didn't pay more attention to that infernal pier-head jumper, Bloom, than to her own husband.