The young man in the seat behind Barbara at the jai alai games had leaned forward finally and asked if she were ill and if she would like to be escorted back to the ship. Barbara had looked up at him, had looked at his looks, and said yes, she thought she would, thank you, that she did have kind of a headache, and that it was certainly was awfully nice of him. Then they had stood up together and left the stadium, returning to the ship by taxi and tender. But before she had gone into her cabin on B deck, Barbara had said nervously to the young man : “Hey. I could just take an aspirin or something. I could meet you on the deck where the shuffleboard stuff is. You know who you look like? You look like a boy who was in a lot of West Pointy pictures with Dick Powell and Ruby Keeler and—when I was little. Never see him anymore. Listen. I could just take an aspirin. Unless you have something else—” The young man had interrupted her, saying, in so many words, that he had nothing else to do. Then Barbara had walked quickly forward to her cabin. She was wearing a red-and-blue striped evening gown, and her figure was very young and sassy. There were several years to go before her figure stopped being sassy and just became a very pretty figure.
       The young man—his name was Ray Kinsella, and he was a member of the ship’s Junior Entertainment Committee—waited for Barbara at the railing on the portside of the promenade deck. Nearly all the passengers were ashore and, in the stillness and moonlight, it was a powerful place to be. The only sound in the night came from the Havana harbor water slucking gently against the sides of the ship. Through the moon mist the Kungsholm could be seen, anchored sleepy and rich, just a few hundred feet aft. Farther shoreward a few small boats corked about.
       “I’m back,” said Barbara.
       The young man, Ray, turned. “Oh. You changed your dress.”
       “Don’t you like white?”—quickly.
       “Sure. It’s fine,” said Ray. She was looking at him a little nearsightedly, and he guessed she probably wore glasses when she was home. He looked at his wrist watch now. “Listen. A tender’s going to leave in a minute. Would you like to go ashore again and horse around a little? I mean do you feel all right?”
       “I took an aspirin. Unless you have something else to do,” said Barbara. “I don’t want to stay on the ship very much.”
       “Let’s hurry, then,” said Ray, and took her arm.
       Barbara had to run to keep up with him. “Golly,” she said, “how tall are you anyway?”
       “Six-four. Hurry a little.”
       The tender bobbed only slightly in the calm water. Ray slipped his hands under Barbara’s arms, eased her down to the tender pilot and then jumped into the boat himself. The little action disordered a single lock of his dark hair and hiked up the back of his dinner jacket. He pulled down his jacket, and a pocket comb immediately found its way to his hand; he passed it just once, brought up in the rear by the careful flat of his other hand, through his hair. Then he looked around. Besides Barbara and himself and the pilot there were only three people in the tender. One of them he identified as a A-deck stewardess—she probably had a shore date with one of the crew. The other two people, a couple in their late forties, were familiar-faced passengers whom Ray didn’t know by name—they were regulars at the horse-racing game each afternoon, he knew though. He lost interest at that point and steadied Barbara as the little craft shoved off.
       The wife, however, was beginning to look interested in Barbara and Ray. She was a beautifully, a perfectly, gray-haired woman in a long sleeved evening gown with Thurber dogs in the pattern. She was wearing a pear-shaped diamond ring and a diamond bracelet. Just on sight no one very sensible would have laid bets on her background. She might, years ago, have walked very erectly across a Broadway stage, with an ostrich fan, singing A Pretty Girl Is Like A Melody, or something similarly ostrich fan-ish. She might have been an ambassador’s daughter or a fireman’s daughter. She might have been her husband’s secretary for years. As only second-class beauty can be identified, there is no way of telling.
       She spoke to Barbara and Ray suddenly.
       “Isn’t it a heavenly night?”
       “It certainly is,” Ray said.
       “Don’t you just feel wonderful?” the woman asked Barbara.
       “I do now. I didn’t before,” Barbara answered politely.
       “Oh,” said the woman, smiling, “I just feel wonderful.” She slipped her arm through her husband’s. Then for the first time she noticed the stewardess from A deck, who was standing beside the pilot. She called to her: “Don’t you just feel marvelous tonight?”
       The stewardess turned. “I beg your pardon?” Her tone was that of an off-duty snob.
       “I said don’t you feel just wonderful. Isn’t it a heavenly night?”
       “Oh,” said the stewardess, smiling briefly, “I guess so.”
       “Oh, it is,” said the woman emphatically. “One would never know it was nearly December.” She visibly squeezed her husband’s hand and addressed him in the same ecstatic tones she had been using. “You do feel marvelous, don’t you darling?”
       “Sure do,” said her husband and winked at Barbara and Ray. He wore a wine-colored dinner jacket that was cut very full, letting him look huge rather than overweight.
       The woman turned and looked out over the water. “Heavenly,” she said softly. She touched her husbands sleeve. “Darling, look at those sweet little boats.”
       “Where?”
       “There. Over there.”
       “Oh yeah. Nice.”
       The woman spoke suddenly to Barbara. “I’m Diane Woodruff and this is my husband Fielding.”
       Barbara and Ray in turn introduced themselves
       “Of course!” said Mrs Woodruff to Ray. “You’re the boy who runs all the tournaments. Lovely.” She again looked out over the water. “Those poor little boats. They all belong in bathtubs.” She looked at Barbara and Ray. “Where are you both going? Why don’t you come along with us? Of course! You must. Say you will. Please do.”
       “Well, I—it’s very nice of you,” answered Ray. “I don’t know what Barbara had—”
       “I’d love to,” said Barbara. “Where are you going? I mean, I’ve never been to Havana before.”
       “Everywhere!” said Mrs Woodruff roundly. “Well, isn’t this just perfect?” She leaned forward and called again to the stewardess. “Dear, wouldn’t you like to join us? Please do.”
       “I’m sorry. I hafta meet somebody. Thanks just the same, though.”
       “What a pity. Fielding, darling, you look like a college boy, so young. It’s indecent.”
       “Me? An old punk like me?”
       “Where are you from dear?” Mrs Woodruff asked Barbara.
       “Coopersburg, Pennsylvania. It’s near Pittsburgh.”
       “Oh, how nice. And you?”
       “Salt Lake City,” said Ray.
       “We’re from San Francisco. Isn’t it wonderful? Do you think we’ll be in the war soon, Mr Walters? My husband doesn’t think so.”
       “Kinsella,” corrected Ray. “I don’t know. I go in the Army anyway when the cruise is over.”
       Mrs Woodruff put a hand to her mouth. “Oh!” she said. “Oh, I’m so sorry!”
       “Oh, It won’t be too bad,” Ray explained.” I have a commission in the artillery from R.O.T.C. I’ll have my own battery and all. I mean I won’t have to take anybody’s guff.”
       As the tender bumped gently into port, Ray put his arm around Barbara’s waist to steady her.
       “She has no waist at all,” said Mrs Woodruff and looked gently at Ray. “How perfect it must be for you to be out on a night like this with somebody who has absolutely no waist at all.”

Ray, who had recommended it, led the way into Viva Havana. It was chiefly a tourist spot, but with money and highhandedness behind it. There was nothing inside except the waiters. The owner was Irish, the menu was French, the headwaiter was Swiss, the orchestra was mostly Brooklyn, the chorus girls were former citizens of Shubert’s alley, and Scotch sold better than any other drink.
       The jai alai games over, the crowd from the ship had already arrived at Viva Havana and were distributed sunburntly around the vast, noisy room. Ray immediately noticed the young lady whom he and the other Junior Committeemen had intimately voted Miss Latex Bathing Suit of 1941. She was swaying, half in and half out of her partner’s arms, near the orchestra stand, talking to the leader, probably asking him to play Stardust. Ray also spotted the governor-elect—the ship’s celebrity—on his way to the game room, wearing a white dinner jacket, not his usual man-of-the-people skimpy black suit. The Masterson Twins, Ray also noticed, were at a table with—in the parlance of the ship’s employees—the Chicago Catch and the Cleveland Outfumbler, was just unquestionably tight.
       Mr Woodruff attended to the ordering when they were all seated. Then he and Mrs Woodruff pried their way to the dance floor.
       “Would you like to dance?” Ray asked Barbara.
       “Not right away. I don’t know how to rumba. I need something very slow, anyway. Look at Mrs Woodruff. She’s very good.”
       “She’s not bad,” conceded Ray.
       Barbara said excitedly, “Isn’t she nice? Isn’t she beautiful? She’s so—so I don’t know what. Golly!”
       “She certainly talks a lot,” Ray said, stirring his highball.
       “You must meet a lot of people, going on these cruises all the time,” Barbara said.
       “This is only the second time. I just quit college. Yale. I was going in the army anyway, so I figured I might as well have a little fun.” He lit a cigarette. “What do you do?” he asked.
       “I used to work. I don’t do anything now. I didn’t go to college.”
       “I haven’t seen your mother anywheres around tonight,” said the Yale man.
       “The lady traveling with me?” said Barbara. “She isn’t my mother.”
       “She isn’t?”
       “No. My mother’s dead. She’s my mother-in-law-to-be.”
       “Oh.”
       Barbara reached forward for the centerpiece matchbox. She struck a match, blew it out, struck another, blew it out and drew back her hands to her lap. “I was sick for a while,” she said, “and my fiancé wanted me to go away for a rest. Mrs Odenhearn said she’d take me on a cruise or something. So we went.”
       “Well!” said Ray, who was watching Miss Latex Bathing Suit of 1941 perform on the dance floor.
       “It’s like being with a girl my own age, almost,” Barbara said. “She’s very nice. She was a great athlete when she was young.”
       “She seems very nice. Drink your drink, why don’t you?”
       Barbara picked up her drink and sipped a sixteenth of an inch of it. “I can dance to what they’re playing now,” she said
       “Fine.”
       They stood up and worked their way to the dance floor.
       Barbara danced rigidly and without any perceptible feeling for rhythm. In her nervousness she got Ray’s arm into a peculiar position, locked it just enough to give him trouble leading her.
       “I’m an awful dancer.”
       “You certainly are not,” said Ray.
       “My brother tried to teach me when I was little.”
       “Oh?”
       “He’s about your size. He used to play football in high school. Only he hurt his knee and had to stop. He could’ve had a scholarship to almost any college if he hadn’t hurt himself.”
       The floor was so crowded that it mattered relatively little how poorly they danced together. Ray suddenly noticed how blond, how corn yellow, Barbara’s hair was. “What’s your fiancé like?” he asked.
       “Carl? Oh, he’s very nice . He sounds lovely over the telephone. He’s very—very considerate about stuff.”
       “What stuff?”
       “Oh . . . stuff. I don’t know. I don’t understand boys. I never know what their talking about.”
       Ray suddenly lowered his head and kissed Barbara on the forehead. It tasted sweet and left him feeling unsteady.
       “Why did you do that?” Barbara said, not looking up at him.
       “I don’t know. Are you sore?”
       “It’s so warm in here,” Barbara said. “Golly.”
       “How old are you, Barbara?”
       “Eighteen. How old are you?”
       “Well, actually I’m twenty-two.”
       They went on dancing.
       “My father had a cerebral hemorrhage and died last summer,” Barbara said.
       “Oh! That’s tough.”
       “I live with my aunt. She’s a teacher at Coopersburg High. Did you ever read Green Light by Lloyd C. Douglas?”
       “I don’t get much time for books. Why? Is it good?”
       “I didn’t read it. My aunt wants me to read it. I’m stepping all over your feet.”
       “No, you’re not.”
       “My aunt’s very nice,” Barbara said.
       “You know,” said Ray, “it’s very hard to follow your conversation sometimes.”
       She didn’t answer, and for a moment he was afraid he had offended her. He felt a slight panic rise in his head at the thought: he still tasted her forehead on his lips. But, below his chin, Barbara’s voice spoke up again.
       “My brother had a car accident just before I left.”
       It was a great relief to hear.

The Woodruffs were already seated at the table. Their shot glasses of bourbon were empty and their chasers barely sipped. “I waved to you,” Mrs Woodruff lightly accused Barbara. “You didn’t even wave back.”
       “Why, I certainly did wave back to you,” Barbara said.
       “Did you watch us rumba?” asked Mrs Woodruff. “Weren’t we marvelous? Fielding’s a Latin at heart. We’re both Latins. I’m going to the powder room . . . Barbara?”
       “Not just now. I’m watching a drunken man,” Barbara said.
       As Mrs Woodruff left the table, almost simultaneously her husband leaned forward and addressed the two young people.
       “I’m trying to keep something from her. Our son’s going to join the Army while we’re gone, I think. He wants to be a flier. It would kill Mrs Woodruff if she knew.” Mr Woodruff then sat back, sighed heavily and catching the waiter’s eye, he signaled for another round of drinks. Then he stood up, used his handkerchief forcibly and wandered away from the table. Barbara watched him until he disappeared: then she turned and spoke to Ray:
       “Do you like clams and oysters and stuff?”
       Ray started slightly. “Well, yes. Sort of.”
       “I don’t like any kinds of shell food,” Barbara said nervously. “Do you know what I heard today? I heard the ship may not make any more cruises till after the war.”
       “It’s just a rumor,” said Ray casually. “Don’t look so sad about it. You and what’s-his-name—Carl—can take this same cruise after the war,” Ray said, watching her.
       “He’s going in the Navy.”
       “After the war, I said.”
       “I know,” said Barbara, nodding, “but—everything’s so funny. I feel so funny.” She stopped short, unable or unwilling to express herself.
       Ray moved a little closer to her. “You have nice hands, Barbara,” he said.
       She removed them from the table. “They’re terrible now. I couldn’t get the right polish.”
       “They’re not terrible.” Ray picked up one of her hands—and immediately let go of it. He stood up and drew Mrs Woodruff’s chair for her.
       Mrs Woodruff smiled, lit a cigarette and looked alertly at them both. “I want you both to leave very shortly,” she said smiling. “This place isn’t at all right for you.”
       “Why?” asked Barbara, with wide eyes.
       “Really. This is the sort of place to go when the very best things are over and there’s mostly money left. We don’t even belong here—Fielding and I. Please. Take a lovely walk somewhere.” Mrs Woodruff appealed to Ray. “Mr Walters,” she said, “aren’t there any not-too-well-organized clambakes or hayrides tonight?”
       “Kinsella,” corrected Ray, rather curtly. “Afraid not.”
       “I’ve never been to a clambake or a hayride,” Barbara said.
       “Oh! Oh, what bad news! They’re so nice. Oh, how I hate 1941.”
       Mr Woodruff sat down. “What’s that, dear?” he asked.
       “I said I hate 1941,” said his wife peculiarly. And without moving she broke into tears, smiling at all of them. “I do,” she said. “I detest it. It’s full of armies waiting to fill up with boys, and girls and mothers waiting to live in mailboxes and smirking old headwaiters who don’t have to go anywhere. I detest it. It’s a rotten year.”
       “We’re not even in the war yet, dear,” said Mr Woodruff. Then he said: “Boys have always had to go to war. I went. Your brothers went.”
       “It’s not the same. It’s not rotten in the same way. Time isn’t any good anymore. You and Paul and Freddy left relatively nice things behind you. Dear God. Bobby won’t even go on a date if he hasn’t any money. It’s entirely different. It’s entirely rotten.”
       “Well,” said Ray awkwardly. He looked at his wrist watch: then at Barbara. “Like to take in a few sights?” he asked her.
       “I don’t know,” said Barbara, still staring at Mrs Woodruff. Mr Woodruff leaned forward toward his wife. “Like to play a little roulette, honey?”
       “Yes. Yes, of course, darling.” Mrs Woodruff looked up. “Oh, are you leaving, children?” she asked.

It was a little after four in the morning. At one o’clock the portside deck steward had set up some of his deck chairs to accommodate the nondissipating crowd who would, a few hours later, use the post-breakfast sunshine
       There are many things you can do in a deck chair: eat hot hors d’oeuvres when a man passes with them on a tray, read a magazine or a book, show snapshots of your grandchildren, knit, worry about money, worry about a man, worry about a woman, get seasick, watch the girls on their way to the swimming pool, watch for flying fish . . . But two people in the deck chairs, drawn however closely together, can’t kiss each other vary comfortably. Either the arms of a deck chair are too high or the persons involved are seated too deeply.
       Ray was seated on Barbara’s left. His right arm, resting on the hard wood of her chair, was sore from pressure.
       Both of their voices had struck four.
       “How’re you feeling now?” Ray asked.
       “Me? I feel fine.”
       “No, I mean do you still feel a little tight? Maybe we shouldn’t have gone to that last place.”
       “Me? I wasn’t tight.” Barbara thought a minute, then asked: “Were you?”
       “Heck no, I never get tight.” This inaccurate piece of intelligence seemed automatically to renew Ray’s visa to advance over the unguarded frontier of Barbara’s deck chair.
       After two hours of kissing, Barbara’s lips were a little chapped, but still tender and earnest and interested. Ray could not have remembered, even if he had tried, when he had been comparably affected by another girl’s kiss. As he kissed her again now, he was reupset by the sweetness, the generously qualified and requalified innocence of her kiss.
       When the kiss ended—he could never unconditionally concede to the ending of one of Barbara’s kisses—he drew back a very little and began to speak with a hoarseness unnatural even to the hours and the highballs and cigarettes consumed. “Barbara. No kidding. We’ll do it, huh? We’ll get married, huh?”
       Barbara, beside him in the dark, was still.
       “No, really,” Ray begged, as though he had been contradicted. “We’ll be damn happy. Even if we get in the war I’ll probably never be sent overseas or anything. I’m lucky that way. We’d—we’d have a swell time.” He searched her still face in the moonlight. “Wouldn’t we?”
       “I don’t know,” said Barbara.
       “Sure you know! Sure you know! I mean, hell. We’re right for each other.”
       “I keep even forgetting your name,” Barbara said practically. “Golly. We hardly know each other.”
       “Listen. We know each other a lot better than most people that know each other for months!” Ray informed recklessly.
       “I don’t know. I wouldn’t know what to tell Mrs Odenhearn.”
       “His mother? Just tell her the truth, is all!” was Ray’s advice.
       Barbara made no reply. She bit nervously at the cuticle of her thumb. Finally she spoke. “Do you think I’m dumb?”
       “Do I what? Do I think you’re dumb? I certainly don’t!”
       “I’m considered dumb,” said Barbara slowly. “I am a little dumb. I guess.”
       “Now stop that talk. I mean, stop it. You’re not dumb. You’re—smart. Who said you’re dumb? That guy Carl?”
       Barbara was vague about it. “Oh, not exactly. Girls, more. Girls I went to school with and go around with.”
       “They’re crazy.”
       “How am I smart?” Barbara wanted to know. “You said I was smart.”
       “Well, you—you just are, that’s all!” said Ray. “Please.” And equipped only for the most primary kind of eloquence, he leaned over and kissed her at great length—persuasively, he hoped.
       At last Barbara gently interrupted him by removing her lips from his. Her face in the moonlight was troubled, but slackly, with her mouth slightly open, without consciousness of being watched.
       “I wish I weren’t dumb,” she said to the night.
       Ray was impatient—but careful.
       “Barbara. I told you. You’re not dumb. Please. You’re not at all dumb. You’re very—intelligent.” He looked at her very possessively, jealously. “What are you thinking about?” he demanded. “That Carl guy?”
       She shook her head.
       “Barbara. Listen. We’ll be happy as anything. No kidding. I know we haven’t known each other very long. That’s probably what you’re thinking about. But this is a lousy time. I mean with the Army and all, and everybody upside down. In other words, if two people love each other they oughtta stick together.” He searched her face, less desperately, bolstered by what he considered to be his sudden insight and eloquence. “Don’t you think so?” he asked moderately.
       “I don’t know,” said Barbara and began to cry.
       She cried painfully, with double-edged gulps from the diaphragm. Alarmed by the violence of her sorrow and by being a witness to it, but impatient with the sorrow itself, Ray was a poor pacifier. Barbara finally emerged from the private accident entirely on her own.
       “I’m all right,” she said. “I think I better go to bed.” She stood up unsteadily.
       Ray jumped up and took her arm.
       “I’ll see you in the morning, won’t I?” he asked. “You’re playing off the finals in the doubles tournament, aren’t you? The deck tennis tournament?”
       “Yes,” said Barbara. “Well, good night.”
       “Don’t say it like that,” said Ray, reprovingly.
       “I don’t know how I said it,” said Barbara.
       “Well. I mean, heck. You said it as though you didn’t even know me or anything. Gosh, I’ve asked you to marry me about twenty times.”
       “I told you I was dumb,” Barbara explained simply.
       “I wish you’d stop saying that.”
       “Good night,” said Barbara. “Thank you for a lovely time. Really.” She extended her hand.

The Woodruffs were the only passengers on the last tender from shore to ship. Mrs Woodruff was in her stockinged feet, having given her shoes to the taxi driver for his lovely driving. They were now ascending the narrow, steep ladder which stretched flimsily between the tender platform and the B deck port door. Mrs Woodruff preceded her husband, several times swinging precariously around to see if her husband was obeying the rules she had imposed on them both.
       “You’re holding the thing. The rope,” she accused, looking down now at her husband.
       “Not,” denied Mr Woodruff indignantly. His bow tie was undone. The collar of his dinner jacket was half turned up in the back.
       “I distinctly said no one was to hold on to the rope,” pronounced Mrs Woodruff. Wavering she took another step.
       Mr Woodruff stared back at her, his face teetering between confusion and abysmal melancholy. Abruptly, he turned his back on his wife and sat down where he was. He was almost precisely at the middle of the ladder. The drop to the water was at least thirty feet.
       “Fielding! Fielding, you come up here instantly!”
       For answer, Mr Woodruff placed his chin on his hands.
       Mrs Woodruff weaved dangerously, then she lifted her skirts and successful, if inexplicably, made the descent to the rung just above her husband’s seat. She embraced him with a half Nelson which nearly capsized them both. “Oh, my baby,” she said. “Are you angry with me?”
       “You said I was using the rope,” said Mr Woodruff, his voice breaking slightly.
       “But, baby mouse, you were!”
       “Was not,” said Mr Woodruff.
       Mrs Woodruff kissed the top of her husband’s head, where the hair was thinnest. “Of course you weren’t,” she said She locked her hands ecstatically around Mr Woodruff’s throat. “Do you love me mouse?” she asked, practically cutting off his respiration. His reply was unintelligible. “Too tight?” asked Mrs Woodruff. She relaxed her hold, looked out over the shimmering water and answered her own question. “Of course you love me. It would be unforgivable of you not to love me. Sweet boy, please don’t fall; put both feet on the rung. How did you get so tight dear? I wonder why our marriage has been such a joy. We’re so stinking rich. We should have, by all the rules, drifted continents apart. You do love me so much it’s almost unbearable, don’t you? Sweet, put both feet on the rung, like a good boy. Isn’t it nice here? We’re defying Magellan’s law. Darling, put your arms around me—no, don’t move! You can’t where you’re sitting. I’ll make believe your arms are around me. What did you think of that little boy and that little girl? Barbara and Eddie. They were—unequipped. Didn’t you think? She was lovely. He was full of baloney. I do hope she behaves sensibly. Oh, this crazy year. It’s a devil. I pray the child uses her head. Dear God, make all the children use their heads now— You’re making the years so horrible now, dear God.” Mrs Woodruff poked her husband in the back. “Fielding, you pray, too.”
       “Pray what?”
       “Pray that the children use their heads now.”
       “What children?”
       “All of them darling. Bobby. Our little gorgeous Bobby. The Freemont girls with their candy ears. Betty and Donald Mercer. The Croft children. All of them. Especially that little girl who was with us tonight. Barbara. I can’t get her out of my mind. Pray, darling boy.”
       “All right.”
       “Oh, you’re so sweet.” Mrs Woodruff stroked the back of her husband’s neck. Suddenly, but slowly, she said: “ ‘I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, By the roes, and by the hinds of the field, That ye stir not up, nor awaken love, Until it please.’ ”
       Mr Woodruff had heard her.
       “What’s ’at from?” he asked.
       “The Song of songs. The Bible. Darling, don’t turn around. I’m so afraid you’ll fall.”
       “You know everything,” said Mr Woodruff solemnly. “You know everything.”
       “Oh, you sweet! Pray a little for the children, my sweet boy. Oh, what a detestable year!”

“Barbara? Is that you dear?”
       “Yes, it is, Mrs Odenhearn.”
       “You can turn on the light, dear. I’m awake.”
       “I can undress in the dark. Really.”
       “Of course you can’t. Turn them on dear.” Mrs Odenhearn had been a deadly serious tennis player in her day, had even once opposed Helen Wills in an exhibition match. She still had two rackets restrung annually, in New York, by a “perfect little man” who happened to be six feet tall. Even now, in bed at 4:45 AM, a “Yours, partner!” quality rang in her voice.
       “I’m wide awake,” she announced. “Been awake for hours. They’ve been so many drunken people passing the cabin. Absolutely no consideration for others. Turn on the light, dear.”
       Barbara turned on the lights. Mrs Odenhearn, to shield herself from the glare, put thumb and forefinger to her eyes, then dropped her hand away and smiled strongly. Her hair was in curlers, and Barbara didn’t look at her very directly.
       “There’s a different class of people, these days,” Mrs Odenhearn observed. “This ship really used to be quite nice. Did you have a nice time, dear?”
       “Yes, I did, thank you. It’s too bad you didn’t go. Is your foot any better?”
       Mrs Odenhearn, with mock seriousness, raised an index finger and wagged it at Barbara. “Now listen to me, young lady. If we lose our match today it’s not going to be on my account. Put that in your pipe and smoke it. So there!”
       Barbara smiled and slid her suitcase out from under the unoccupied twin bed—her bed. She placed it on the bed and began to look for something in it.
       Mrs Odenhearn was thinking.
       “I saw Mrs Helger and Mrs Ebers in the lounge after you left tonight.”
       “Oh?” said Barbara.
       “They’re out for our blood tomorrow, I don’t mind telling you. You must play just a little closer to the net when I’m serving, dear.”
       “I’ll try to,” Barbara said, and went on looking through her suitcase, turning over soft things.
       “Hurry to bed, dear. Hippity Hop,” said Mrs Odenhearn.
       “I can’t find my—oh, here they are.” Barbara withdrew a pair of pajamas.
       “Peter Rabbit,” said Mrs Odenhearn warmly.
       “I beg your pardon?”
       “Carl used to love Peter when he was a child.” Mrs Odenhearn raised her voice an octave or so: “ ‘Mummy, wead me Peatie Wabbit,’ he used to say. Over and over again. I just wish I had a penny for every time that child had to have Peter read to him.”
       Barbara smiled again and started for the adjoining bathroom with her pajamas under her arm. She was briefly arrested by Mrs Odenhearn’s raised voice.
       “Someday you’ll be reading Peter to your little boy.”
       Barbara didn’t have to smile, as she was already in the bathroom. She closed the door. When she came out in her pajamas a moment later, Mrs Odenhearn, who didn’t inhale, was smoking a cigarette through her holder—one of the kind advertised to be a denicotinizer. She was also in the act of reaching for her ship’s library novel, which stood on the night table.
       “All ready for bed, dear? I just thought I’d read one little chapter of my book. It may just make me sleepy. So many, many things running through my poor old head.”
       Barbara smiled and got into bed.
       “Will the light bother you, dear?”
       “Not at all. I’m awfully tired.” Barbara turned over on her side, away from the light and Mrs Odenhearn. “Good night,” she said.
       “Sleep tight, dear . . . Oh, I think I’ll try to sleep too! It’s a very silly book, anyway. Honestly, I never read charming books anymore. The authors nowadays seem to try to write about unattractive things. I think if I could read just one more book by Sarah Milford Pease I’d be happy. She’s dead, poor soul, though. Cancer.” Mrs Odenhearn snapped off the table light.
       Barbara lay several minutes in the darkness. She knew she ought to wait until next week or next month or next—something. But her heart was nearly pounding her out of bed. “Mrs Odenhearn.” The name was out. It stood upright in the darkness.
       “Yes, dear?”
       “I don’t want to get married.”
       “What’s that?”
       “I don’t want to get married.”
       Mrs Odenhearn sat up in bed. She fished competently for the table light switch. Barbara shut her eyes before the room could be lighted and prayed without words and without thoughts. She felt Mrs Odenhearn speak to the back of her head.
       “You’re very tired. You don’t mean what you’re saying, dear.”
       The word “dear” whisked into position—upright in the darkness beside Mrs Odenhearn’s name.
       “I just don’t want to get married to anybody yet.”
       “Well! This is certainly very—unusual—Barbara. Carl loves you a great, great deal, dear.”
       “I’m sorry. Honestly.”
       There was a very brief silence. Mrs Odenhearn shattered it. “You must do,” she said suddenly, “what you think right, dear. I’m sure that if Carl were here he’d be a very, very hurt boy. On the other hand—”
       Barbara listened. It amounted to an interruption, she listened so intently.
       “On the other hand,” said Mrs Odenhearn, “it’s always the best way to rectify a mistake before it’s made. If you’ve given this matter a great, great deal of thought I’m sure Carl will be the last to blame you, dear.”
       The ship’s library novel, upset by Mrs Odenhearn’s vigorous elbow, fell from the night table to the floor. Barbara heard her pick it up.
       “You sleep now, dear. We’ll see when the sun’s shining beautifully how we feel about things. I want you to think of me as you would of your own mother if she were alive. I want so to help you understand your own mind,” said Mrs Odenhearn, and added: “Of course, I know that one can’t alter children’s minds so easily these days, once they’re made up. And I do know you have a great, great character.”
       When Barbara heard the light snap off, she opened her eyes. She got out of bed and went into the bathroom. She came out almost at once, wearing a robe and slippers, and spoke to Mrs Odenhearn in the darkness.
       “I’m just going on the deck for a little while.”
       “What do you have on?”
       “My robe and slippers. It’s all right. Everyone’s asleep.”
       Mrs Odenhearn flicked on the table light again. She looked at Barbara acutely, neither approving nor disapproving. Her look said, “All right. It’s over. I can hardly contain myself, I’m so happy. You’re on your own for the rest of the cruise. Just don’t disgrace or embarrass me.” Barbara read the look faultlessly.
       “Good-by.”
       “Don’t catch cold, dear.”
       Barbara shut the door behind her and began to walk through the silent, lighted passages. She climbed the steps to A deck and walked through the concert lounge, using the aisle a cleaning squad had left between the stacked bodies of easy chairs. In less than four months’ time there would be no easy chairs in the concert lounge. Instead, more than three hundred enlisted men would be arranged wakefully on their backs across the floor.
       High above on the promenade deck, for nearly an hour Barbara stood at the portside rail. Despite her cotton pajamas and rayon robe there was no danger of her catching cold. The fragile hour was a carrier of many things, but Barbara was now exclusively susceptible to the difficult counterpoint sounding just past the last minutes of her girlhood.