Page:The Plutocrat (1927).pdf/177



ROTESQUE" had been his word for the puzzle of her behaviour, and with "Mariar" persistent in his head he feared it was now the right word for his own condition. Never in the young playwright's life had he been so fascinated by a woman, or so piqued and mystified by one. He had no interest in the sea, or in the unknown land upon the other side of it whither he was bound, or in the ship, or in the ship's passengers, save only one. Day and night she was the provoking apple of his mind's eye; he could get no rest from his thought of her, nor any satisfaction in the thought; and when he was with her he felt himself to be clumsy and brooding.

What irked him, too, he could never be alone with her—only the accursed Tinker seemed able to accomplish that. From the moment the execrable one had introduced Albert Jones and Macklyn to her they were barnacles. If she sat in her deck chair, Jones was fast to a chair upon her right, Macklyn clung