He sat with Alice Urquhart because he could not sit with Deborah; or rather, because he would not condescend to share her with that “t’penny-ha’penny mate of a tramp cargo boat”, as he styled Guthrie Carey, whom she had made happy at last.  She had rescued him from her father’s clutches; she had called him to a chair beside her, where there was no room for a third chair.  Her glistening skirt flowed over his modest toes.  Her firm, round arm, flung along the chair arm between them, made him feel like Peter Ibbotson before the Venus of Milo—­it was so perfect a piece of human sculpture.  She lay back, slowly fanning herself, and smiling, her eyes wandering all the time in Dalzell’s neighbourhood, without actually touching him—­a tall, deep-bosomed, dark-eyed, dignified as well as beautiful young woman, knowing herself to be such, and unspoiled by the knowledge.  She wore her crown with the air of feeling herself entitled to it; but it was an unconscious air, without a trace of petty vanity behind it.  Everything about her was large and generous and incorruptibly wholesome, even her undoubted high temper.  And this was her charm to every man who knew her —­not less than her lovely face.

Guthrie Carey—­and who shall blame him?—­basked in his good luck.  But every now and then he looked up and met the glower of Claud Dalzell with a steely eye.  These two men, each so fine of his kind, met with the sentiments of rival stags in the mating season; the impulse to fight ‘on sight’ and assure the non-survival of the unfittest came just as naturally to them as to the less civilised animals.  Each recognised in the other not merely a personal rival, but an opposing type.

It amused Deborah, who grasped the situation as surely as they did, to note the bristling antipathy behind the careful politeness of their mutual regard.  If it did not bristle under her immediate eye, it crawled.

“Look out for the articles of virtue,” Claud had warned her earlier in the evening.  “That big sailor of yours is rather like a bull in a china shop; he nearly had the carved table over just now.  He doesn’t know just how to judge distance in relation to his bulk.  I’d like to know his fighting weight.  When he plants his hoof you can feel the floor shake.”

“He is a fine figure of a man,” Deb commented, with a smile.

“I can’t,” yawned Mr Dalzell casually, “stand a person who eats curry with a knife and fork.”

“It was pretty tough, that curry.  I expect he couldn’t get it to pieces with a spoon.”

“He did not try to.”

“I never noticed.  I shouldn’t remember to notice a little trifle like that.”

“My dear girl, it is the little trifle that marks the man.”

“Oh!” said Deb.  And then she sought Guthrie Carey, and brought him to sit beside her.

“That gentleman sings well,” remarked Guthrie tepidly, at the conclusion of a finely rendered song.  “I often wish I could do those ornamental things.  Unfortunately, a man who has his work—­if he sticks to it properly—­gets no time to qualify.  I’m afraid I shall never shine at drawing-room tricks.”