k you, again and again!"

He bowed from where he stood in the center of his quiet and sheltered
office, seeming, to her, a strangely old-time and courtly figure, a
proud yet unpretentious student of life at peace with his own soul.
The years would come and go, the years that would so age and wear and
torture _her_, but he would reign on in that quiet office unchanged,
contented, still at peace with himself and all his world. "Good-bye,"
she said for the third time, from the doorway.

Then she hurried down to her waiting carriage and raced for the quay.
There she took an almost malicious delight in the bustle and
perturbation to which her return gave sudden rise. The sleepy and
sullen crew were stirred out, signals were clanged, ropes were cast
off; and down in her little narrow cabin, securely shut off from the
driving spray, she could feel and hear the boat lurch and pound through
the waves. Then came shrill calls of the whistle above, the sound of
gruff voices, the rasp and scrape of heaving woodwork against woodwork,
the grind of the ladder against the boat-fenders, the cry of the
officer telling her to hurry.

She walked up the _Slavonia's_ ladder steadily, demurely, for under the
lights of the promenade deck she could see the clustering, inquisitive
heads, where a dozen crowding passengers tried to ascertain just who
could be coming aboard with such ceremony.

Leaning over the rail, with a cigar in his mouth, she caught sight of
her husband. As she passed him, at the head of the ladder, he spoke
one short sentence to her, under his breath.

It was a commonplace enough little sentence, but as the purport of it
filtered through her tired mind it stung her into both a new wariness
of attitude and thought and a new gratefulness of heart.

For as she passed him, without one betraying emotion or one glance
aside, he had whispered to her, under his breath:

"_Keenan is here, on board. Be careful!_"

CHAPTER XVI

BROKEN INSULATION

The _Slavonia_ was well down the Adriatic before Keenan was seen on
deck. Both Frank and Durkin, by that time, had met in secret more than
once, and had talked over their predicament and decided on a plan of
action.

"Whatever you do," Durkin warned her, "don't let Keenan suspect who I
am! Don't let him get a glimpse of you with me. My part now has got
to be what you'd call 'armed neutrality.' If anything unforeseen turns
up--and that can only be at Palermo or Gibral