"Yes; I came around here once, something over a year ago, on a steamer from Belize. We made a stop of a few hours and I was besotted enough to leave the ship. I shan't make any such mistake again."
"Gracias á Dios," she said musingly. "I wonder who said it first—and why he was thanking God—particularly?"
I laughed. "Some storm-tossed mariner of the early centuries, I imagine, who was glad enough to make a landfall of any sort."
"Storm-tossed," she repeated. "Aren't we all more or less storm-tossed, Richard?"
"I suppose we are, either mentally, morally, or physically. It's a sad enough world, if you want to take that angle."
"But I don't want to take that angle. When I do take it, it's because I have to."
Being as much of a hypocrite as any of those whom Van Dyck had proposed putting under his analytical microscope, I said: "But there are no constraining influences at work upon any of us aboard this beautiful little pleasure ship—there can't be."
"Do you think not?" she threw in; and then, without warning: "How about you and Conetta, Richard?"
In common justice to Conetta I had to feign an indifference I was far from feeling—which was more of the hypocrisy.
"That was all over and done with three years ago, as you must know, Madeleine. She wasn't aware of the fact that I was to be in the Andromeda party; and I didn't know she was to be—at least, not until after I had committed myself to Bonteck. Of course we promptly quarreled the moment we met. Perhaps you may have noticed that we've been quarreling ever since."