"I am a schoolmaster," he remarked. "Probably I can—"
"Inhibition?" she interrupted.
"Inhibition?" he said. "That means 'holding back.' Latin 'habeo, I have' or 'I hold' and 'in—"
"Women have no inhibitions," she repeated; "no power of holding back."
She frowned, and decided to return to that later. "Now philoprogenitive," she said turning to him. He stared at her, coughed again and held out his hand for the book.
"That's rather a difficult book for a girl to be reading, isn't it?" he said, glancing at the title page. "Oh, Kraill the biologist? Whatever makes you read that? I thought girls read Mrs. Barclay and Charles Garvice."
"I have not read any of their books yet," she said. "I read this book some time ago, and it seemed to me to hold the whole illumination of life. But since I've been on this ship I've been in a muddle about things. People are not a bit like I thought they would be. I was awake hours last night trying to get right about it."
"They're not a very nice collection here—in the steerage. But the difference in fare between steerage and second is very considerable—very considerable," he sighed. "My profession must take care of the financial aspect of life."
Marcella felt that he was honest. He was the first passenger who had admitted that he had not unlimited wealth.
"That's refreshing. Most of the people here want one to think they are disguised millionaires only travelling steerage to enquire into the ways of poorer folks. And that's part of my puzzle. I want to know why these people are not a very nice collection. Is my taste at fault? Last night I raked out my 'Golden Treasury' and read about 'Blind misgivings of a creature roaming about in worlds not realized.'"