For the second time, Peter wished he hadn't a clerical collar.

The next he was taking the glass from the South African.

"Cheerio," said Donovan.
"Here's to you," said Peter, and leaned back with an assumption of ease.
He had a strange sense of unreality.

No fool and no Puritan, he had naturally, however, been little in such an atmosphere since ordination.
He would have had a drink in Park Lane with the utmost ease, and he would have argued, over it, that the clergy were not nearly so out of touch with men as the papers said.

But down here, in the steamer's saloon, surrounded by officers, in an atmosphere of indifference to him and his office, he felt differently.