Page:The Plutocrat (1927).pdf/133

 be in the stars and sky when we think our world-ship is the only thing with life and everything else is death. We are wrong, I think. Everything is life and nothing at all is death." She turned to him suddenly. "Do you think so?"

"I do," he answered earnestly, leaning toward her a little. "I do—since you show me how to think so."

She smiled, but glanced away from him. "I am afraid you may mean you think the sea is making me sentimental, Mr. Ogle. Our little world of the ship is coming very much to life since all the people have had their lunch." She added this commonplace to her reverie; but her gaze went back to the sea.

Passengers had come out from the dining salon and the lounge in increasing numbers; and many of them now read in their chairs or wrote letters upon books and magazines supported by their knees. Some of them leaned upon the rail, chatting or scanning the sea in hope of whales or porpoises; others covered themselves with rugs in the long chairs and lapsed into drowsy apathy; but most of them became cheerful itinerants, making the everlasting round of the deck and seeming to take a lively pride in their pedestrianism.

Among these, though they were not equipped with