“But,” Krame remarked, with a smile that confirmed Mr. Alter’s declaration, “you have lived in ships?” “As a visitor.” “Even as a visitor you must be able to see--well, how we live, what work we do, and things of that kind.” “But not how you think, and not how you would act if there were no spectators from the world outside. That’s what any writer has to discover about the persons of his drama--not what they do before the footlights, but what they were thinking before the curtain went up. Otherwise he can’t make them live.” All the world loves to hear itself discussed as a mystery, and Mr. Alter’s mysteriousness produced at least a part of the result for which he had hoped. Howdray and Elstone were awake now; Krame was delighted to find a whetstone on which to sharpen his wits; and Driss--Mr. Alter felt the glow of his personality for the first time, saw him lean forward and listen intently, though, in the presence of his seniors, he hesitated to speak. Mr. Alter wanted him to speak, wanted them all to come out of their shells; but he saw that as yet they were not ready. He, by talking himself, must give them material they might afterwards care to pull to pieces. “Have you ever noticed,” he said, “how Portsmouth and other naval ports differ from the rest of the world?” “Lord Almighty! have we not!” Howdray exclaimed in his great voice. “Pompey, Queensferry, Gib., Sheerness--they are all the same, curse them.” “And even Arosa Bay and Vigo?” “Just the same.” “Although they are south of the Bay and Pompey north of it? Doesn’t that strike you as strange?” “I believe,” said Driss, “that if you could drop the Fleet into the middle of County Carlow it would bring its own atmosphere with it.” “That’s what I mean,” Mr. Alter exclaimed, pulling out a pipe. “Its own atmosphere--it has a definite atmosphere of its own, enveloping it, hiding it from outsiders. And the atmosphere they breathe changes naval officers only so long as they breathe it. Once outside it--once in the train from Portsmouth to London, for instance--they are so much like the ordinary civilian that he fails to recognize them as visitors from another world. He notices something a little strange about them--something he can’t define, something that, in nine cases out of ten, he dismisses with the catchword ‘breezy.’” “Breezy!” groaned Elstone. “Don’t we look breezy?” “No, you don’t--not here and now, because you are within the atmosphere, though my presence disturbs it somewhat, I dare say. But if you went ashore to-night, outside Portsmouth, away from naval people--what then?” “Ask Krame. He is the poodle-faker.” “Poodle-faker?” “A payer of polite calls,” Howdray explained. “A balancer of teacups. An opener of doors. An eater of small morsels. A maker of small talk--in short, a specialist in drawing-room duties.” “But poodle-faking is quite different,” said Krame.