He took no trouble to get a passenger-list, and he had the more trouble when he tried at last; the lists seemed to have all vanished, as they have a habit of doing, after the first day; the one that he made interest for with the head steward was a second-hand copy, and had no one he knew in it but the Eltwins.

The social solitude, however, was rather favorable to certain other impressions.

There seemed even more elderly people than there were on the Norumbia; the human atmosphere was gray and sober; there was nothing of the gay expansion of the outward voyage; there was little talking or laughing among those autumnal men who were going seriously and anxiously home, with faces fiercely set for the coming grapple; or necks meekly bowed for the yoke.

They had eaten their cake, and it had been good, but there remained a discomfort in the digestion.

They sat about in silence, and March fancied that the flown summer was as dreamlike to each of them as it now was to him.