It was no time for the sweets of luxury; they would come, in their season, with the swallow and the lime flowers. Now on the rough water there was a formality to be observed, no more. It was as though a deed of conveyance of her narrow loins had been drawn and sealed. I was making my first entry as the freeholder of a property I would enjoy and develop at leisure.

We dined that night high up in the ship, in the restaurant, and saw through the bow windows the stars come out and sweep across the sky as once, I remembered, I had seen them sweep above the towers and gables of Oxford. The stewards promised that tomorrow night the band would play again and the place be full. We had better book now, they said, if we wanted a good table.

‘Oh dear,’ said Julia, ‘where can we hide in fair weather, we orphans of the storm?’

I could not leave her that night, but early next morning, as once again I made my way back along the corridor, I found I could walk without difficulty; the ship rode easily on a smooth sea, and I knew that our solitude was broken.

—

My wife called joyously from her cabin: ‘Charles, Charles, I feel so well. What do you think I am having for breakfast?’

I went to see. She was eating a beefsteak.

‘I’ve fixed up for a visit to the hairdresser – do you know they couldn’t take me till four o’clock this afternoon, they’re so busy suddenly? So I shan’t appear till the evening, but lots of people are coming in to see us this morning, and I’ve asked Miles and Janet to lunch with us in our sitting-room. I’m afraid I’ve been a worthless wife to you the last two days. What have you been up to?’

‘One gay evening’, I said, ‘we played roulette till two o’clock, next door in the sitting-room, and our host passed out.’

‘Goodness. It sounds very disreputable. Have you been behaving, Charles? You haven’t been picking up sirens?’

‘There was scarcely a woman about. I spent most of the time with Julia.’

‘Oh, good. I always wanted to bring you together. She’s one of my friends I knew you’d like. I expect you were a godsend to her. She’s had rather a gloomy time lately. I don’t expect she mentioned it, but…’ my wife proceeded to relate a current version of Julia’s journey to New York. ‘I’ll ask her to cocktails this morning,’ she concluded.

Julia came among the others, and it was happiness enough, now merely to be near her.

‘I hear you’ve been looking after my husband for me,’ my wife said.

‘Yes, we’ve become very matey. He and I and a man whose name we don’t know.’

‘Mr Kramm, what have you done to your arm?’

‘It was the bathroom floor,’ said Mr Kramm, and explained at length how he had fallen.

That night the captain dined at his table and the circle was complete, for claimants came to the chairs on the Bishop’s right, two Japanese who expressed deep interest in his projects for world-brotherhood. The captain was full of chaff at Julia’s endurance in the storm, offering to engage her as a seaman; years of sea-going had given him jokes for every occasion. My wife, fresh from the beauty parlour, was unmarked by her three days of distress, and in the eyes of many seemed to outshine Julia, whose sadness had gone and been replaced by an incommunicable content and tranquillity; incommunicable save to me; she and I, separated by the crowd, sat alone together close enwrapped, as we had lain in each other’s arms the night before.