He hurried up the deck and
went into the saloon parlor, full of women
who had retreated thither from the sharp wind.
He threw himself upon them. He talked delightfully
to the older ones and played accompaniments for the
younger ones until the last sleepy girl had followed
her mother below. Then he went into the smoking-room.
He played bridge until two o'clock in the morning,
and managed to lose a considerable sum of money
without really noticing that he was doing so.
After the break of one fine day the
weather was pretty consistently dull.
When the low sky thinned a trifle, the pale white
spot of a sun did no more than throw a bluish
lustre on the water, giving it the dark brightness
of newly cut lead. Through one after another
of those gray days Alexander drowsed and mused,
drinking in the grateful moisture. But the complete
peace of the first part of the voyage was over.
Sometimes he rose suddenly from his chair as if driven out,
and paced the deck for hours. People noticed
his propensity for walking in rough weather,
and watched him curiously as he did his
rounds. From his abstraction and the determined
set of his jaw, they fancied he must be thinking
about his bridge. Every one had heard of
the new cantilever bridge in Canada.
But Alexander was not thinking about his work.
After the fourth night out, when his will
suddenly softened under his hands, he had been
continually hammering away at himself.
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