None of the girls had thought it odd that she should cross the ocean with Lethway. They had been envious, as a matter of fact. They had brought her gifts, the queer little sachets and fruit and boxes of candy that littered the room. In that half hour before sailing they had chattered about her, chorus unmistakably, from their smart, cheap little hats to their short skirts and fancy shoes. Her roommate, Mabel, had been the only one she had hated to leave. And Mabel had queered her, too, with her short-bobbed yellow hair. She did a reckless thing that night, out of pure defiance. It was a winter voyage in wartime. The night before the women had gone down, sedately dressed, to dinner. The girl she had tried to speak to had worn a sweater. So Edith dressed for dinner. She whitened her neck and arms with liquid powder, and slicked up her brown hair daringly smooth and flat. Then she put on her one evening dress, a black net, and pinned on her violets. She rouged her lips a bit too. The boy, meeting her on the companionway, gasped. That night he asked permission to move over to her table, and after that the three of them ate together, Lethway watching and saying little, the other two chattering. They were very gay. They gambled to the extent of a quarter each, on the number of fronds, or whatever they are, in the top of a pineapple that Cecil ordered in, and she won. It was delightful to gamble, she declared, and put the fifty cents into a smoking-room pool. The boy was clearly infatuated. She looked like a debutante, and, knowing it, acted the part. It was not acting really. Life had only touched her so far, and had left no mark. When Lethway lounged away to an evening's bridge Cecil fetched his military cape and they went on deck. "I'm afraid it's rather lonely for you," he said. "It's always like this the first day or two. Then the women warm up and get friendly." "I don't want to know them. They are a stupid-looking lot. Did you ever see such clothes?" "You are the only person who looks like a lady to-night," he observed. "You look lovely. I hope you don't mind my saying it?" She was a downright young person, after all. And there was something about the boy that compelled candour. So, although she gathered after a time that he did not approve of chorus girls, was even rather skeptical about them and believed that the stage should be an uplifting influence, she told him about herself that night. It was a blow. He rallied gallantly, but she could see him straggling to gain this new point of view. "Anyhow," he said at last, "you're not like the others." Then hastily: "I don't mean to offend you when I say that, you know. Only one can tell, to look at you, that you are different." He thought that sounded rather boyish, and remembered that he was going to the war, and was, or would soon be, a fighting man. "I've known a lot of girls," he added rather loftily. "All sorts of girls."