“Is it the wine that’s made me stupid?” she asked. “I feel as if my teeth were swollen, and my skin was too tight for my bones. Beastly!”
“How horrid!” Keith said lightly, taking from her hand the glass of water. “If it’s the wine you won’t feel the effects long. Go on deck if you like. You’ll feel all right in the air. I’ll clear away.” Jenny would not leave him. She shook her head decidedly. “Wait a minute, then. I’ll come too!”
They moved quickly about, leaving the fruit and little sweets and almonds upon the sidetable, but carrying everything else through a sleeping-cabin into the galley. It was this other cabin that still further deepened Jenny’s sense of pain—of inferiority. That was the feeling now most painful. She had just realised it. She was a common girl; and Keith—ah, Keith was secure enough, she thought.
In that moment Jenny deliberately gave him up. She felt it was impossible that he should love her. When she looked around it was with a sorrowfulness as of farewell. These things were the things that Keith knew and had known—that she would never again see but in the bitter memories of this night. The night would pass, but her sadness would remain. She would think of him here. She gave him up, quite humble in her perception of the disparity between them. And yet her own love would stay, and she must store her memory full of all that she would want to know when she thought of his every moment. Jenny ceased to desire him. She somehow—it may have been by mere exhausted cessation of feeling—wished only to understand his life and then never to see him again. It was a kind of numbness that seized her. Then she awoke once again, stirred by the bright light and by the luxury of her surroundings.
“This where you sleep?” With passionate interest in everything that concerned him, Jenny looked eagerly about the cabin. She now indicated a broad bunk, with a beautifully white counterpane and such an eiderdown quilt as she might optimistically have dreamed about. The tiny cabin was so compact, and so marvellously furnished with beautiful things that it seemed to Jenny a kind of suite in tabloid form. She did not understand how she had done without all these luxurious necessities for five-and-twenty years.
“Sometimes,” Keith answered, having followed her marvelling eye from beauty to beauty. “When there’s company I sleep forward with the others.” He had been hurrying by with a cruet and the bread dish when her exclamation checked him.
“Is this lord a friend of yours, then?” Jenny asked.
“Sometimes,” Keith dryly answered. “Understand?” Jenny frowned again at his tone.
“No,” she said. Keith passed on.
Jenny stood surveying the sleeping-cabin. A whole nest of drawers attracted her eye, deep drawers that would hold innumerable things. Then she saw a hand-basin with taps for hot and cold water. Impulsively she tried the hot-water tap, and was both relieved and disappointed when it gasped and offered her cold water. There were monogramed toilet appointments beautiful to see; a leather-cased carriage clock, a shelf full of books that looked fascinating; towels; tiny rugs; a light above the hand-basin, and another to switch on above the bunk.... It was wonderful! And there was a looking-glass before her in which she could see her own reflection as clear as day—too clearly for her pleasure!