s only heightens the effect of the coincidence," he
hazarded, and his companion smiled as though amused at some unimpaired
element of humor as she naively responded: "Yes--except that in a
foreign town we would be apt to meet the same people."

However it had happened, thought Stuart, it was a deplorable accident:
their being thrown together for ten days in the narrowed companionship
of a sea-voyage. For her, even more than himself, it must bring back the
painful notoriety of their last companionship.

It had all been so bootless and uncalled for! Marian Holbury might have
divorced her husband had she wished, and remained unstigmatized. Yet she
had, by yielding to an ungoverned impulse, reversed their positions of
justification. Now the news of their names on the same sailing lists
would come to ears at home and set tongues wagging afresh. There had
been enough of that.

As she stood there regarding him quietly, with the thorough
self-possession of her sex and her class, he reminded himself that there
was no profit in a sulkiness of attitude.

"What are your sentiments," he inquired, "regarding a cup of tea?" And
she laughed frankly and easily as she responded:

"They are of the friendliest." Together they turned and went toward the
nearest white-jacketed deck steward.

As he made a pretense of sipping his tea Farquaharson admitted to
himself that the lady whom he was meeting after a long interval had lost
nothing of her charm.

The ten days of enforced companionship would at all events be relieved
of tedium, but he was in a quandary as to what should be his attitude.
Later in the seclusion of the smoking-room he shaped a tentative policy
of such deferential courtesy as he would have tendered a new
acquaintance. He fancied that she would appreciate a manner which
neither bordered on intimacy nor presumed upon the past.

But as the days went on a variance developed between the excellence of
his plan in theory and in practical application. For one thing, Marian
herself seemed less grateful in her acceptance of it than he had
anticipated. He sometimes felt, from a subtle hint of her manner, that
her confidence in her own adroitness and _savoir faire_ needed no such
assistance from him.

There were moments, too, between their casual conversations when a
wistful sort of weariness brought a droop to her lips, as though she
would have welcomed a less constrained companionship.

Sometimes when off guard, he found hi