re seas were almost motionless, the days and
nights were without wind, and the equable, balmy air was like that of
an American mid-summer, so that all of the day and much of the night
they spent on deck, where the Welsh schoolmaster eyed them covertly, as
a honeymoon couple engulfed in the selfish contentment of their own
great happiness. It reminded Frank of earlier and older days, for,
with the dropping away of his professional preoccupations, Durkin
seemed to relapse into some more intimate and personal relationship
with her. It was the first time since their flight from America, she
felt, that his affection had borne out the promise of its earlier
ardor. And it taught her two things. One was that her woman's natural
hunger for love was not so dead as she had at times imagined. The
other was that Durkin, during the last months, had drifted much further
away from her than she had dreamed. It stung her into a passionate and
remorseful self-promise to keep closer to him, to make herself always
essential to him, to turn and bend as he might bend and turn, but
always to be with him. It would lead her downward and still further
downward, she told herself. But she caught solace from some blind
belief that all women, through some vague operation of their
affectional powers, could invade the darkest mires of life, if only it
were done for love, and carry away no stain. In fact, what would be a
blemish in time would almost prove a thing of joy and pride. And in
the meantime she was glad enough to be as happy as she was, and to be
near Durkin. It was not the happiness she had once looked for, but it
sufficed.

They caught sight of a corner of Corsica, and on the following night
could see the glow of the iron-smelting fires on Elba, and the twinkle
of the island shore-lights. From the bridge, too, through one of the
officers' glasses, Frank could see, far inland across the Pontine
Marshes, the gilded dome of St. Peter's, glimmering in the pellucid
morning sunlight.

She called Durkin, and pointed it out to him.

"See, it's Rome!" she cried, with strangely mingled feelings. "It's
St. Peter's!"

"I wish it was the Statue of Liberty and New York," he said, moodily.

She realized, then, that he was not quite so happy as he had pretended
to be. And she herself, from that hour forward, shared in his secret
unrest. For as time slipped away and her eye followed the heightening
line of the Apennines, she knew that tr