“Oh, rot!” she laughed, but she showed impatience. “Don’t be so foolish and conventional. You do want to see the place. You said you did. And I want to go, too. It’s nothing extraordinary. It’s just the same as if I asked you to play shuffle-board. Honest, you do want to go; don’t you?”
“Yes,” he half-drawled, but made no effort to move from a convenient sprawl over the rail.
“Then let’s,” she begged. “This place is making me ill.... Oh, very well,” she took his silence for obstinacy. “I’ll stay.... No, I won’t. I’ll be hanged if I do. The heat is too much and the smells are worse. I’ll risk it. I’ll go it alone.... Why won’t you go with me?”
He searched in his pockets carefully and finally presented a flat leather wallet.
“You force me to admit my very embarrassing position.” As he fumbled with the strap on the wallet she understood. The word “embarrassing” was in itself illuminating.
“Oh!” she gasped, shocked at her own stupidity. What an idiot! She had been gabbling to this man when all the while he had been warning her to keep off!
By this time he had opened the wallet and had drawn from its case a single five-dollar bill.
“That is why,” he remarked. “I am down to five dollars, which I must not touch until I land in New York. That five dollars is my sole anchor to windward. Fortunately meals and sleeping-apartment are paid for on board; but my ticket says nothing about side-trips. Therefore I should not dare step on that gang-plank. I consider myself lucky—mighty lucky—to arrive on board so safe financially as this. Forgive me for the confession; but you must admit that you forced it. Awfully sorry, too; for, now that you understand, I don’t mind telling you that this is the hottest, dirtiest, ill-smellingest spot imaginable. Would I like to go to the top of that hill and look my fill and breathe!” He straightened up suddenly. “Lord!”
“Then let’s go!” she cried. “Let’s! I’ve got money; heaps of it.” She dived into a bag she carried with her. “Look here!” she flashed a packet of various coloured bank-notes. In an inner compartment she showed him a mixture of sovereigns and gold louis. “The purser will give me Italian money. He said he would this morning. Wait! I’ll get a hat.”
She sped across the deck and around the corner before he could protest. To her stateroom she went first and added a veil about her hat, selected a parasol and donned long thin gloves. Then to the purser’s.