hat your purpose was--oh yes! with deep respect one
would wonder about that."

"And you have been wondering these last three days? Well, tell me what
you think my purpose was in abandoning all maidenly reserve and
throwing myself at your head."

"Why," said Lanyard with a look of childlike candour, "you might, you
know, have been uncontrollably swayed by some passionate impulses of
the heart."

"But otherwise--?" she prompted, hugely amused.

"Oh, if you had a low motive in trying to make a fool of me, you know
too well how to hide your motive from such a fool."

In a fugitive seizure of thoughtfulness the violet eyes lost all their
impishness. She sighed, the bright head drooped a little toward the
gleaming bosom, a hand stole out to rest lightly upon his once again.

"It was not acting, Michael--I tell you that frankly--at least, not all
acting."

"Meaning, I take it, you know love too well to make it artlessly."

"I'm afraid so, my dear," said Liane Delorme with another sigh. "You
know: I am afraid of you. You see everything so clearly..."

"It's a vast pity. I wish I could outgrow it. One misses so many
amusing emotions when one sees too clearly."

During another brief pause, Lanyard saw Monk come on deck, pause, and
search them out, in the chairs they occupied near the taffrail, much as
on that other historic night. Not that he experienced any difficulty in
locating them; for this time the decklights were burning clearly.
Nevertheless, Captain Monk confessed emotion at sight of those two in a
quite perceptible start; and Lanyard saw the eyebrows tremendously
agitated as their manipulator moved aft.

Unconscious of all this, Liane ended her pensive moment by leaning
toward Lanyard and making demoralizing eyes, while the hand left his
and stole with a caressing gesture up his forearm.

"Is love, then, distasteful to you unless it be truly artless,
Michael?"

"There's so much to be said about that, Liane," he evaded.

Monk was standing over them, a towering figure in white with the most
forbidding eyebrows Lanyard had ever seen.

"Might one suggest," he did suggest in iced accents, "that the
quarter-deck is a fairly conspicuous place for this exhibition of
family affection?"

Liane Delorme turned up an enquiring look, tinged slightly with an
impatience which all at once proved too much for her.

"Oh, go to the devil!" she snapped in that harsh voice of the sidewalks
which she was able to use and