Cadogan shook his head. "Even if all the rest of it were true, I have nothing in life to renounce."
"How can you know that? You would be renouncing a limitless capacity for enjoyment, if nothing more." Lavis rose to his feet. "I hope I haven't bored you too much? I think I will go out and get some fresh air." He bowed and smiled to Meade, smiled more warmly on Cadogan, wrapped his top-coat over his evening clothes, and went out on deck.
Meade saw that Cadogan was gazing thoughtfully on the seat which Lavis had vacated. "What do you make of him, Cadogan?"
Cadogan's face, when he swung his chair around, was flushed, his dark-blue eyes more glowing than usual. "I don't know, except that he had me thinking. He made me feel that he was reading my mind, and before he left I was saying to myself, 'When I grow older I'll be something like him,' only, of course, with less brains than he's got."
"You'll have brains enough, don't fear. He made me think of the head of a religious order who went wrong some years ago. But that was before I knew much of the inside of Continental affairs. A woman, as I recall it. However, he's gone—he made my head ache trying to follow him, and—but there is the major and Vogel passing the port-hole. I'll call them in and we'll have our little rubber."
They sat in to their little rubber, and while they played a passenger of importance was auctioning off the pool on the ship's run for the next day.
He stood on a table to see and be seen, a short, fat, bearded man who sometimes had to pause for breath. "Here she is, gentlemen, the largest ship of all time making marine history. What d'y' say, gentlemen? We all know what we did up to noon to-day. We did even better, impossible though it may seem, this afternoon. Now, what am I offered for the high field? Come now, gentlemen. By Tuesday morning, at ten o'clock, are we to be abreast of Sandy Hook or not? It will be a record run if we make it, but whether we are a few minutes late or early, every indication points to a grand day's run for to-morrow. Come, gentlemen, bid up!"
"What of the rumors of icebergs?" asked a voice.
"Pray do not joke, gentlemen. I beg of you, do not joke. Has any person here observed any notice of icebergs posted on the ship's board? I fancy not. To-day I myself put the question to the man whose word is law on this ship. Do I have to name him, gentlemen? No need, is there? No. 'Are we going to slow down?' was my question. 'On the contrary, we are going to go faster,' was the reply."