The flirting itself, such as there was of it, must be carried on in the glare of the pervasive publicity; it must be crude and bold, or not be at all.
There seemed to be very little of it.

There were not many young people on board of saloon quality, and these were mostly girls.

The young men were mainly of the smoking-room sort; they seldom risked themselves among the steamer chairs.

It was gayer in the second cabin, and gayer yet in the steerage, where robuster emotions were operated by the accordion.

The passengers there danced to its music; they sang to it and laughed to it unabashed under the eyes of the first-cabin witnesses clustered along the rail above the pit where they took their rude pleasures.
With March it came to his spending many hours of each long, swift day in his berth with a book under the convenient electric light.