“I know how a young girl is brought up in France,” I began hurriedly—
“We are no young girls now, Monsieur. There are only women in France.”
The voice was back into the measured, impersonal tone.
I looked at her, amazed, started to speak and stopped. I understood that I should gain nothing by forcing a conversation, and though every instinct urged me to remain near her, I rose to withdraw.
“May I present myself, Mademoiselle, since we are to be companions for a while? I am Mr. David Littledale.”
She bowed in acknowledgment but made no answer, and I went down the deck with a stirring uneasiness at the awkwardness which it seemed to me I had displayed in every word and action. Later in the day I found a card on her chair. The name was like herself, a veil thrown up against my curiosity.
“Mademoiselle Renée Duvernoy.”
VII
An ocean steamer is a great university of the world. Infinity of sea and sky bring an incredulity of the defined land, where strange human beings move under precise conventions to the tyranny of what is or is not done. For me the comprehensible world was but this speck of wood, swinging between water and sky. The salt democracy of the sea and the common sense of danger run quickened our senses and let down the barriers of our Anglo-Saxon restraint.