go?"

"It was there all right enough, lying dormant, you know. I felt it.
Mrs. Fazakerly felt it--that's why she married the Colonel. You felt
it."

"I didn't."

"Excuse me, you did. That's why you stayed three weeks at Coton
Manor when you needn't have stopped three days. As for Mr. Manby
there, he simply worships the ground she treads on, as they say."

"The devil he does! What's he doing here?"

"As you see, he's painting pictures as hard as ever he can go. He
paints them in order to live; but as he has to live in order to
paint, Frida--well, between you and me, Frida keeps him and Eileen
and Ermyntrude, the whole family, in short. But that's a detail. It
isn't offered as any explanation of the charm. I don't believe that
anybody ever realizes that Frida has money."

He could believe that. He had never realized it himself. Her
enjoyment of life was so finished an art that it kept its machinery
well out of sight.

"Frida," Georgie serenely continued, "has a weakness for landscape
painters. The memory of her mother--no doubt."

"Don't they--don't they bore her?"

"No. It takes a great deal to bore Frida--naturally, after the
Colonel. Besides, she doesn't give them the chance. Nobody ever gets
what you may call a hold on Frida. There's so much more of her than
they can grasp. And there are, at least, three sides of her by which
she's unapproachable. One of them's her liberty. If you or I or the
little Manby man were to take liberties with her liberty Frida
would----"

"What would Frida do?"

"She would drop us down, very gently, at the nearest port, and make
for the Unexplored! And yet, I don't know. That's the lovely and
fascinating thing about Frida--that you never _do_ know."

XVI

The fortnight's cruise was at an end, the _Torch_ had gone back to
her owners, without Durant, who had contrived to stay on board the
_Windward_ till the latest possible moment. The yacht was lying-to,
outside the same white-walled harbor where she had first found
Durant. She wheeled aimlessly about with slackened sails, swaying,
balancing, hovering like a bird on the wing, impervious and
restless, waiting for the return of the boat that was to take Durant
on shore. It had only just put off with the first load of
guests--the Manbys--under Georgie Chatterton's escort. As Durant
watched it diminishing and vanishing, he thought of how Georgie had
described their hostess's method of dealing with exacting friends.
She was