ation, too.

"They returned the yacht in perfect condition?"

"Yes."

"Did they steal anything?"

Cunningham could positively see Cleigh's jowls redden as he shook his head
to the query.

"Sorry. You can't expect us to waste coal hunting for a scoundrel who only
borrowed your yacht."

But what was the row between Cleigh and his son? That was a puzzler. Not a
word! They ignored each other absolutely. These dinners were queer games,
to be sure. All three men spoke to the girl, but neither of the Cleighs
spoke to him or to each other. A string of glass beads!

What about himself? What had caused his exuberance to die away, his
enthusiasm to grow dim? Why, a month gone he would burst into such gales
of laughter that his eyes would fill with tears at the thought of this
hour! And the wine tasted flat. The greatest sea joke of the age, and he
couldn't boil up over it any more!

Love? He had burnt himself out long ago. But had it been love? Rather had
it not been a series of false dawns? To a weepy-waily woman he would have
offered the same courtesies, but she would not have drawn his thoughts in
any manner. And this one kept entering his thoughts at all times. That
would be a joke, wouldn't it? At this day to feel the scorch of genuine
passion!

To dig a pit for Cleigh and to stumble into another himself! In setting
this petard he hadn't got out of range quickly enough. His sense of humour
was so keen that he laughed aloud, with a gesture which invited the gods
to join him.

Jane, who had been watching the solitary figure from the corner of the
deck house and wondering who it was, recognized the voice. The cabin had
been stuffy, her own mental confusion had driven sleep away, so she had
stolen on deck for the purpose of viewing the splendours of the Oriental
night. The stars that seemed so near, so soft; the sea that tossed their
reflections hither and yon, or spun a star magically into a silver thread
and immediately rolled it up again; the brilliant electric blue of the
phosphorescence and the flash of flying fish or a porpoise that ought to
have been home and in bed.

She hesitated. She was puzzled. She was not afraid of him--the puzzle lay
somewhere else. She was a little afraid of herself. She was afraid of
anything that could not immediately be translated into ordinary terms of
expression. The man frankly wakened her pity. He seemed as lonely as the
sea itself. Slue-Foot! And somewhere a woman had laughed