It was her language, the language in which she could think with ease and celerity, compared with which the coördinated sounds which were called words were no more to her than the metal tokens called money. So there was nothing extraordinary in her quick grasp of the situation which demanded a mouse-like seclusion for a while. She lay still, even when footsteps clattering down the ladder were obliterated by the spluttering whoop of the whistle. And then came a novel and all-embracing sense of change, a mysterious and minute vibration which becomes apparent to a person situated well forward in a vessel beginning to move under her own power. Ah! the _machine à vapeur_, the _vapore_, the fire, the agitation behind. For perhaps a single second her quick flame-like mind played about the incomprehensible enigmas of mechanism. She, for whom unknown men in distant countries were to scheme and toil, that they might send her yachts and automobiles, music-machines and costly fabrics, jewels and intricate contrivances for her comfort and pleasure, had the conceptions of a domestic animal concerning the origins of their virtues. For her the effortless flight of a high-powered car ascending a mountain road was as natural and spontaneous as the vulture hanging motionless above her or the leaf flying before her in an autumn wind. Her gracile mentality made no distinction in these things, and the problems of cost never tarnished the shining mirror of her content. Upon her had never intruded those mean and unlovely preoccupations which distract the victim of western civilization from the elementary joys and sorrows. She had always been fed and cared for and she had no shadow of doubt upon her mind that nourishment and care would ever cease. Her notion of evil was clear and sharp. It implied, not vague economic forces, but individual personalities whom she called enemies. Any one announcing himself as an enemy would be met in a primitive way. She would back into a corner, spitting and biting. If she had a weapon, and she always had, she would use it with cool precision. She lay in her bunk now without a care in the world because she possessed the power of animating men to bear those cares for her. She could inspire passion and she could evoke admiration and remorse.