their way in broken English, and jealously keeping themselves aloof from each other. About a couple of dozen went to the first-class division, the rest, as we have said, went to the second cabin.
While Philip was languidly watching this migration, his attention was attracted by one woman who came alone, like himself, without friends to see her off.
A thin woman, plainly dressed, about twenty-five, with dim, grey eyes, pale cheeks and brown hair—a woman who might have been good-looking if she had been happy, but who looked, as he himself was, uninteresting as she glided along, looking at no one.
He knew the symptoms which that pale face with the wearied eyes expressed, and felt a surge of sympathy swell up in his breast as he followed her slowly down to the saloon. She had tried the world as he had, and found it wanting. They were both desolate souls on an arid strand, waiting hopelessly and helplessly on their fate.
And Fate had brought them together on this ocean hotel.
They might hate each other, perhaps, for they were both defiant and miserable. Philip Mortlake was inured to hatred, and prepared almost to court it again as he took his seat beside her at the lunch prepared for the passengers and their friends.
