“A woman’s head,” she repeated absently, and her fingers idly toyed with a jingling ornament in her belt. In an idle moment I had sketched the head, as I remembered it, on a sheet of paper, and now I took it from my pocket and handed it to her. We were standing near a port-hole of the music saloon, from which light streamed. “That is the head,” said I. She deliberately placed the paper in the belt of light, and, looking at it, remarked mechanically: “This is the head, is it?” She showed no change of countenance, and handed it back to me as if she had seen no likeness. “It is very interesting,” she said, “but one would think you might make better use of your time than by surreptitiously sketching portraits from sick men’s breasts. One must have plenty of leisure to do that sort of thing, I should think. Be careful that you do not get into mischief, Dr. Marmion.” She laughed. “Besides, where was the special peculiarity in that portrait that you should treasure it in pencil so conventionally?--Your drawing is not good.--Where was the point or need?” “I have no right to reply to that directly,” I responded. “But this man’s life is not for always, and if anything happened to him it would seem curious to strangers to find that on his breast--because, of course, more than I would see it there.” “If anything happened? What should happen? You mean, on board ship?” There was a little nervousness in her tone now. “I am only hinting at an awkward possibility,” I replied. She looked at me scornfully. “When did you see that picture on his breast?” I told her. “Ah! before THAT day?” she rejoined. I knew that she referred to the evening when I had yielded foolishly to the fascination of her presence. The blood swam hotly in my face. “Men are not noble creatures,” she continued. “I am afraid you would not give many their patents of nobility if you had power to bestow them,” I answered. “Most men at the beginning, and very often ever after, are ignoble creatures. Yet I should confer the patents of nobility, if it were my prerogative; for some would succeed in living up to them. Vanity would accomplish that much. Vanity is the secret of noblesse oblige; not radical virtue--since we are beginning to be bookish again.” “To what do you reduce honour and right?” returned I. “As I said to you on a memorable occasion,” she answered very drily, “to a code.” “That is,” rejoined I, “a man does a good action, lives an honourable life, to satisfy a social canon--to gratify, say, a wife or mother, who believes in him, and loves him?” “Yes.” She was watching Belle Treherne promenading with her father. She drew my attention to it by a slight motion of the hand, but why I could not tell. “But might not a man fall by the same rule of vanity?” I urged. “That he shall appear well in their eyes, that their vanity in turn should be fed, might he not commit a crime, and so bring misery?”