Page:The Plutocrat (1927).pdf/99

 "enhelmed," which was of all words in our language, he felt, the one most expressive of the close shapeliness of Mme. Momoro's coifing, yet has not many twins in sound; and Ogle, as a poet, was not so advanced as Macklyn, but still clung to rhyme. "Whelmed" had been his tentative solution after an hour's fretful experiment, and he still hoped to do better.

No golden helm was visible along the lines of chairs where cheerful voyagers basked and chatted, nor among those who strolled the deck and to-day made bold to show some hint of the climates to which they were escaping; for light fabrics and even white flannels appeared here and there. The four lively damsels brushed by Ogle as he began to pace the immaculate planking; they had found a boy or two and were merry, yet made evident some encouragement to the handsome lone pedestrian; two of them looking him humorously, yet rather pointedly, in the eye, so that he understood he might approach and be forgiven, if he would. These young things, so brisk and boyish, annoyed him; his mind was all upon Hellenic stillness.

Among the strolling or reclining passengers he saw a few whom, he remembered indifferently, he had