It was not the afternoon to be on deck—on the contrary. It was exactly the afternoon when there is no snugger place than a warm cabin, a warm bunk. Tucked up with a rug, a hot-water bottle and a piping hot cup of tea she would not have minded the weather in the least. But he—hated cabins, hated to be inside anywhere more than was absolutely necessary. He had a passion for keeping, as he called it, above board, especially when he was travelling. And it wasn’t surprising, considering the enormous amount of time he spent cooped up in the office. So, when he rushed away from her as soon as they got on board and came back five minutes later to say he had secured two deck chairs on the lee side and the steward was undoing the rugs, her voice through the high sealskin collar murmured “Good”; and because he was looking at her, she smiled with bright eyes and blinked quickly, as if to say, “Yes, perfectly all right—absolutely,” and she meant it. “Then we’d better——” said he, and he tucked her hand inside his arm and began to rush her off to where the two chairs stood. But she just had time to breathe, “Not so fast, Daddy, please,” when he remembered too and slowed down. Strange! They had been married twenty-eight years, and it was still an effort to him, each time, to adapt his pace to hers. “Not cold, are you?” he asked, glancing sideways at her. Her little nose, geranium pink above the dark fur, was answer enough. But she thrust her free hand into the velvet pocket of her jacket and murmured gaily, “I shall be glad of my rug.” He pressed her tighter to his side—a quick, nervous pressure. He knew, of course, that she ought to be down in the cabin; he knew that it was no afternoon for her to be sitting on deck, in this cold and raw mist, lee side or no lee side, rugs or no rugs, and he realized how she must be hating it. But he had come to believe that it really was easier for her to make these sacrifices than it was for him. Take their present case, for instance. If he had gone down to the cabin with her, he would have been miserable the whole time, and he couldn’t have helped showing it. At any rate, she would have found him out. Whereas, having made up her mind to fall in with his ideas, he would have betted anybody she would even go so far as to enjoy the experience. Not because she was without personality of her own. Good Lord! She was absolutely brimming with it. But because ... but here his thoughts always stopped. Here they always felt the need of a cigar, as it were. And, looking at the cigar-tip, his fine blue eyes narrowed. It was a law of marriage, he supposed.... All the same, he always felt guilty when he asked these sacrifices of her. That was what the quick pressure meant. His being said to her being: “You do understand, don’t you?” and there was an answering tremor of her fingers, “I _understand_.”