"I wish it had been on deck," he remarked, "instead of a place with
damned gold chairs and gold on the ceiling, and cloth on the walls, and
velvets such as respectable folks use for dress and not for ornament, and
candles in gold sticks, and the floor like a sheet of ice.

"Hell," said Mr. Aiken. "I'd sooner slip on blood than on a floor like
that. Yes, so I would. I wonder why those frog eaters don't make their
houses snug and decent instead of big as a church. Now, though I'm not a
moral man, yet I call it immoral, damned if I don't, to live in a house
like that."

"Yet somehow pleasant," I ventured politely, "surely you have found that
the beauty of most immoral things. They all seem to be pleasant. Am I not
right, Mr. Aiken?"

He looked at me sharply, shrugged his shoulders, and denied me the
pleasure of an answer.

"Not that I meant to puzzle you," I added hastily, "but you have sailed
so long with my father, that I considered you in a position to know. Now
in France--"

Mr. Aiken dropped his pipe.

"Who said anything about France?" he demanded.

"And did you not?" I asked, beginning to enjoy my visit. "Surely you were
speaking just now about a chateau, the scene of some pleasant adventure.
Pray don't let me interrupt you."