Presently a steward brought matches for his pipe. "Can you tell me," Garth inquired, "who are the ladies sitting amidships on the port side of this deck; a young lady in a blue hat, with a grey fur coat, and an older woman in brown? They look as they'd be someone in particular?"
"They are, sir," replied the man quite eagerly. "You must mean Miss Sorel and her mother; they're with the Earl of Severance."
"That's right," said Garth. "I wonder, are they the ones at the Captain's table."
"Certain to be, sir," the steward assured him.
Garth lit his pipe, and let the steward go without further questioning. He yearned to ask who the Sorels were, and why it was so certain they would be in the place of honour at the Captain's table--where he might have been, and was not! But somehow, the thought of pumping a steward for intimate details about that girl repelled him. He supposed she was "some swell" in Severance's set. Not since he had enlisted in the Grenadier Guards, nearly five years ago, had he taken leave in London. He had been eight times a "casualty," but by luck, or ill-luck, his wounds had not been "Blighty-wounds." His last leave he had spent in Paris, and the second--one summer--in Yorkshire and Scotland, because his father had been a Yorkshireman by birth.
If Garth had ever heard of Marise Sorel's success in New York and London, the story had gone in at one ear and out at the other. It did not occur to him that the Radiant Dream might be an actress. But her face haunted him, got between his eyes and his book and made his pipe go out, as sunlight is supposed to extinguish a fire.
He had rather prided himself on these old clothes of his, on shipboard. They were full five years of age, had been bought ready-made at Albuquerque, Arizona, for twenty dollars, and were damned comfortable. Now, to his shamed surprise, he found himself wishing he had kept to khaki, as he had a right to do. Severance had called him a "clod-hopper," and he knew the word fitted him in that suit, a blamed sight better than did the suit itself!
Well, it wasn't too late yet. He could doll up in his uniform any minute; he could even claim his place at the Captain's table, and meet the Girl. His heart beat at the thought. He made up his mind he would do just that; and then as quickly he changed it.