He blamed himself for not having got at least a pair of the white tennis-shoes which so many of the passengers were wearing; his russet shoes had turned shabby on his feet; but there was a pair of enamelled leather boots in his bag which he thought might do.
His room was in the group of cabins on the upper deck; he had already missed his way to it once by mistaking the corridor which it opened into; and he was not sure that he was not blundering again when he peered down the narrow passage where he supposed it was.

A lady was standing at an open state-room door, resting her hands against the jambs and leaning forward with her head within and talking to some one there.
Before he could draw back and try another corridor he heard her say: "Perhaps he's some young man, and wouldn't care." Burnamy could not make out the answer that came from within.

The lady spoke again in a tone of reluctant assent, "No, I don't suppose you could; but if he understood, perhaps he would offer." She drew her head out of the room, stepping back a pace, and lingering a moment at the threshold.

She looked round over her shoulder and discovered Burnamy, where he stood hesitating at the head of the passage.

She ebbed before him, and then flowed round him in her instant escape; with some murmured incoherencies about speaking to her father, she vanished in a corridor on the other side of the ship, while he stood staring into the doorway of his room.
He had seen that she was the young lady for whom he had come to put on his enamelled shoes, and he saw that the person within was the elderly gentleman who had sat next her at breakfast.