THE
HIGH
SEA
521
riage anniversaries. She pondered his contentment, based no doubt on
lack of imagination and the family custom of hearty breakfasts, while
she gnawed her lamb chop lightly and found it delicious.
For all the money she had spent, and the things she had bought,
and the places she had been, she could hardly remember ever having
been comfortable. Beggars pinch me, she reminded herself, and never
for any price will I be able to buy a ticket that will set me down
in the place I wish to be. Maybe the place doesn't even exist, or if it
does, it's much too late to go there. And my husband preferred sleep–
ing with any chance slut rather than with me, and talked day and
night about how he loved me; and if there is a dull man on board
ship I am certain to fall into conversation with him. Yet this one
looked promising enough when Jenny Brown was hanging on his
words....
Freytag had been saying something and she caught the tag of
the sentence: "My wife is Jewish, you know, and we are leaving
Germany for good. I suppose there is no real hurry, but I just prefer
to go while there is time."
"Time?" asked Mrs. Treadwell, without thinking. "What is hap–
pening?" Then her heart jumped, she already knew the answer and
did not want to hear it spoken.
"Oh, signs and portents," said Freytag, already regretting his
words, "Nothing that seems so serious, but we have a habit of
watching the weather," he said, and wondered at his weakness in
having spoken so carelessly to this stranger.
"You needn't tell me," said Mrs. Treadwell, hastily. "I once
knew a Russian Jew who remembered a pogrom-when he was a
child. He was six when it happened," she told him, in her gentle light
voice, "and he remembered absolutely everything except how he got
away. That he did not know at all. Isn't it strange?"
Freytag was silent for so long she turned her amiable smile,
somewhat brighter than usual, upon him. He was picking at his thumb
nail and looking as
if
he had got a blow over the head.
"I shouldn't have talked about it," he said, after a while, "I
should never say anything about it."
"Perhaps you are right," said Mrs. Treadwell, thinking, What
do you expect? what can I do? She moved to put her tray aside. He
took it from her and set it on the deck beside
his
own. They rose.
"That was lovely, having breakfast here," she told him, "It
was wondedul of you to think of it." She moved away again, from
the threat of human nearness.
If
she listened, she would weaken
little by little, she would warm up in spite of herself, perhaps in
