At the dance which the Admiral gave in his flagship he took entire charge of her. She could not help noticing that in the flagship the personality of Ordith had made itself felt. And he was in excellent form that night, laughing, dancing with extraordinary swing and rhythm, awakening in her an excitement that brightened her eyes and brought a hot flush to her cheeks. Through many of the long hours in which she danced John was in charge of the _Pathshire’s_ picket-boat, lying alongside the flagship, waiting until, the guests being ready to leave, the boats should be called to the gangway. He had undertaken this duty, which was not properly his own, in order that he might avoid a direct decision as to whether he should attend the dance or deliberately absent himself from it. He had lacked courage either to compete with Ordith, or, without some excuse of “duty,” to leave the field clear for him. “Not going to the dance?” Hartington had said. “No.” “Why on earth not? You are a dancing man, aren’t you?” “I am running the picket-boat,” John had answered. But Hartington had seen deeper than this poor excuse. “Couldn’t you have got someone to run it for you--if you want to go to the dance?” “I am taking it for someone else.” “Oh! Not your own job?” “No.” “You are an uncourageous fellow.” For a moment John had remained silent. Then he had burst out: “Oh, it’s no good. You don’t know Ordith. You don’t know old Fane-Herbert. The odds are too big.” Hartington had shrugged his shoulders. “That’s for you to decide.” So John waited in the darkness at the flagship’s side. Above him the quarter-deck was gay with red and white bunting, and brilliant with electric lights. John wondered if coachmen and chauffeurs felt as he did. The colour and music were close to him, but he had no part in them. He saw shadows move to and fro on the decorative flags, and wondered if that shadow were Margaret’s, and what she was saying and doing at that instant. Certainly, he reflected, he could not be entering into her thoughts; and yet it seemed strange, almost incredible, that she, of whom he thought so insistently, should occupy her mind with other things--an experiment in a new dance-step, perhaps, or the effect of her dress, or the excellence of supper. This thought, as it were an arm that thrust him back into the darkness from which he desired to issue, quickened his sense of remoteness. He saw all his hopes and desires objectively, as if he looked down from a barred window on to a world he could not enter. There, on the quarter-deck, within a few yards of him, was Margaret; he could not attain to her, he could not make her hear; she was dancing and laughing, eating and drinking, unconscious of his proximity, forgetful of his existence.