It was a few days later that Muriel, the reconciled, decided that she wanted to leave Aiken.

"Don't you think," she asked, for she had come unconsciously often to use phrases characteristic of Jim, "that a change of scene would be good for us both?"

Stainton had not thought so. He had wandered so much in his life that, now wandering was no longer a necessity of life, he was tired of it. Besides, he was eminently satisfied with Aiken.

"I don't know," he said. "I think it's splendid here. Haven't we been—aren't you happy, dear?"

Muriel was looking out of the window of their hotel sitting-room.

"Of course I'm happy," she said in a low voice. "At least," she added, "I know I ought to be, and I know I never knew what happiness was till I had you. It was only that I thought it would be—perhaps it would be good for me—now—if we travelled."

Stainton cursed himself for a negligent brute.

"What a beast I am!" he said, his arm encircling her waist. "We shall go wherever you want, and we shall go to-morrow."

Muriel smiled ruefully.

"Perhaps," she submitted, "the real reason is only that I've always wanted so to travel and have never had the chance before."

But Stainton would hear of no reason but her first. He upbraided himself again for his stupidity in not guessing her need before she could have given it expression.

"I've been cruel to you!" he declared.

She stopped him with a swift embrace.

"You're never anything," she contritely vowed, "but just darling to me. I only thought——"

"I know, I know. Where shall we go, Muriel? How about France? I ought to see that syndicate, you know: I ought to meet those men personally. Then there's Paris. I have always longed for Paris myself, and now I shall have you for my guide there."

"Your guide, Jim?"

"Well, you speak French like a book, and I have forgotten nearly all of the little I ever learned."

"I speak school-French," Muriel corrected him.

"At any rate," he assured her, "yours is fluent, and I can only stammer in the language. Then, too," he went on, "there will be the trip across. That will be good for you. Sea air ought to be good for you." She winced, and so he hurried to add: "I think I need a bracer, too.—Are you a good sailor, Muriel?"

"I don't know. I've never been on the ocean. Are you?"

"I used to be." His eyes darkened. "It's a good many years since I have tried the water. But I know I shall be all right. I am in such splendid shape. Where is a newspaper? Wait a minute; I'll ring for one. Aren't you glad for newspapers now? They carry shipping advertisements, you see. We'll look up the sailings. We have found our first five heavens in America; we must find the sixth in France, and then we must come back here so that our seventh will happen on American soil."

Considering the fact that he did not wish to go, he was self-sacrificingly energetic. He was so energetic that they left Aiken on the next morning and, three days later, were aboard their steamer.

The Newberrys were out of town, still enjoying the rest that they had earned by settling Muriel for life. George Holt was, however, there and had come all the way to Hoboken to see them off.

"And as a German steamship captain once said to me when I asked him to lunch with me at my club," explained Holt, "it's a terribly long way from Hoboken to America."

"It was good of you to come," said Muriel, while the crowd of second-class passengers and the friends of passengers jostled about the first-class promenade deck. "Don't you wish you were coming along?"

"Better," said Stainton, already in his steamer cap.

"Thanks, no," said Holt, and then, as the siren blew: "If you'd asked my advice before you bought your tickets, old man, I'd have told you: 'Don't go to sea; but if you do go, don't play cards; but if you do play cards, cut the cards. They'll cheat you anyhow, but it'll take longer.'"

He waved a plump farewell and bared a bald head and waddled down the gang-plank. The band began to play, and Stainton and his wife went to their stateroom to unpack: they were travelling without a maid because Muriel had said something about wanting to secure one in France.

By sunrise next morning the Friedrich Barbarossa was racing through the grey Atlantic with even speed. It was late winter—it was really early spring—and she had already encountered a storm and heavy seas, but the lean ocean express dove through the former and rode the latter as easily as if she had been a railway train running on tried rails along a perfect roadbed. There was no reason in the world why anybody should be sick aboard her; few others were sick; yet, Stainton, on that second day out, remained below.

He could not account for it. He did not like to confess it. He especially hated to confess, when he awoke to see his wife putting the finishing touches to her toilet in the far corner of their big stateroom. But this was manifestly a case where discretion must triumph over valour: he no sooner got to his feet than he got off them again.

"It's no use," he sighed. "I don't know what it was. I wish they didn't have such good dinners on this boat, for it must have been something I ate."

Muriel was all consolation.

"Let me ring for the steward to bring your breakfast here," she said.

"Not if you don't want to kill me! Don't mention food again, please—I wonder if that lobster were just fresh."

She insisted for a long time that she would remain below with him, but he overruled her. He said that the open air would be good for her, even if she did not seem to need it, and he meant that, although he meant also—what he dared not say—that he wanted to struggle alone with his malady. Finally, therefore, Muriel descended to the big dining saloon alone and surprisedly found herself breakfasting with enjoyment, in spite of her husband's absence.

She walked the long sweep of the promenade deck and sat for a while in her steamer chair, next Jim's, where, for a few beautiful hours on the evening before, Jim had sat with her. She read a little from a frothy novel that fell short of the realities of love as she knew it, and failed to touch on that great reality which still so heavily oppressed her; and she watched the long, oily swell of the now green waters, beating to crests of foam, here and there, and forming an horizon-line for all the world like distant mountain-peaks seen, as Stainton had so often seen such peaks, from a peak that is higher than them all. She went to look after Jim every quarter of an hour, but, just before the band began to play on deck and the deck-stewards came smilingly about with their trays of bouillon and sandwiches, she found him sleeping and resolved not again to disturb him. She knew that she was very lonely, but she lunched on herring salad, clam chowder, farced turkey-wings, oysterplant mÉnagÈre, succotash, biscuit japonais and nougat parfait. She had finished and was sitting idly at her table watching the awkward motions with which a line of otherwise commonplace passengers walked by on their way upstairs, when her notice was caught by a man whose gait had all the certainty of a traveller upon a level road.

He was tall and slender, with a figure altogether built for grace and agility; but what especially impressed her was his air of abounding youth. His face was, in fact, that of a mere boy—a boy not five years her senior. It was a perfect oval, that face, flushed with health and alight with freshness. Even the fiercely waxed little blond moustache above its full red lips failed to give it either age or experience, and the clear eyes, intensely blue, looked on all they met with the frank curiosity of the young that are in love with life. They met Muriel's own interested scrutiny and, when they answered it with an honest smile, whipped a sudden blush into her pale cheeks.

Muriel hastened from the saloon. She went to look after Jim; but Jim still slept.

She went on deck again. She knew that the blond young man would be there, though how she knew it she could not guess, and yet she argued that there was no reason why his presence should banish her from the free air.

She sat down. She saw him coming past, on a walk about the deck, and looked away. The second time he passed she glanced at him, and he smiled and raised his steamer cap. A gust of wind fluttered her rug, and he stooped to rearrange it.

"Thank you," stammered Muriel. "It's not necessary, really. The steward——"

The young man bowed. It was a bow that, in New York, would have struck her as absurdly elaborate; here she liked it.

"But it is, I assure you, a pleasure," he protested.

He spoke English without an accent, but with a precision that, for all its ease, betrayed a Teutonic parentage and education.

"Thank you," repeated Muriel, and she blushed again.

The young man stood before her, his arms folded, swaying in serene certainty with the rolling rhythm of the boat.

"May I sit down?" he asked, indicating, with a gesture of his hand, the row of empty chairs beside her.

Muriel made, by way of reply, what she conceived to be a social masterstroke.

"Certainly," she answered; "but I am here only for a few moments. I'll soon have to be running downstairs—I mean 'below'—to look after my husband."

The stranger's handsome face expressed concern, yet the concern, it immediately appeared, was not because of Muriel's marital state, but because of her husband's physical plight.

"I am so sorry," he said, taking Jim's chair. "He is ill then, your husband?"

Muriel did not seem to like this.

"Not very," said she. "He is"—she searched for a phrase characteristic of Stainton—"he is just a bit under the weather."

"So," sighed the stranger, unduly comprehending. "Ah, perhaps Madame has made more voyages than has he?"

"No, this is the first trip across for both of us."

"Indeed? But you seem to be so excellent a sailor! Is it only youth that makes you so?"

"I don't know." She was clearly, her will to the contrary, a little flattered. "I seem to take naturally to the water."

"But not so your husband!"

"He will be all right to-morrow."

"Only to-day he is, your husband, not all right? I am so sorry. Perhaps he is not so young as you are?"

Muriel felt herself again flushing. She at once became more angry at her anger than she was at what, upon reflection, she decided to be nothing more than frank curiosity on the part of her interlocutor.

"Of course he is young!" she heard herself saying.

The stranger either did not observe her emotions or did not care to show that he observed them. He launched at once upon an unrestrained flow of ship talk. It seemed that he was an Austrian, though of Hungarian blood on his mother's side. He had gone into the army, was an officer—already a captain, she gathered—and he had been serving for some months as an attachÉ of his country's legation in Washington. Now he had been transferred to the legation at Paris. Muriel noted that he spoke with many gestures. She tried to dislike these as being un-American, and when she found it hard to dislike what were, after all, graceful adjuncts to his conversation and frequent aids to his adequate expression, she was annoyed and tried to indicate her annoyance.

"I thought you were a soldier?" she said.

With another European bow he produced a silver case engraved with his arms, drew from it a card, which he handed to Muriel. The card announced him as Captain Franz EsterhÁzy von B. von Klausen.

"But yes," he said. "Please."

Muriel slipped the card into her belt.

"You seem to like the diplomatic service better," she said.

Von Klausen shrugged.

"I go where I am sent," said he.

"Would you ever go to war?" she persisted.

"If I had to. Why not?"

"And fight?"

"Dear lady, but yes. I do not like, though, to fight, for war is what one of your great generals said: it is Hell."

"Yet you went into the army?"

"Because all my family have for generations done thus. I was born for that, I was brought up for that, and when I came to know"—he extended his palms—"I had to live," he concluded.

This was scarcely Muriel's ideal of a soldier. She changed the conversation.

"Of course you know Europe perfectly?" she enquired.

"Not Russia," answered von Klausen; "but Germany, France, Spain, Italy and England—yes. You will travel much?"

Muriel did not know; very likely they would. They would do whatever Mr. Stainton—Mr. Stainton was her husband—elected: she always did, always wanted to do, whatever her husband elected.

The young man bowed at mention of Jim's name, as if he were being introduced.

"Certainly," he gravely agreed. "Certainly, since he is your husband.—But you must not miss my country, dear lady, as so many foolish tourists miss it. It is the Tyrol, my fathers' country: the Austrian Tyrol. There is scenery—the most beautiful scenery in all the world: superb, majestic. You love scenery? Please."

Muriel gave a surprised assent.

"Then do not neglect the Tyrol. They call it the Austrian Tyrol, but it is really the only real Tyrol. Come to Innsbruck by the way of Zurich. That will bring you along the Waldersee, and so, too, you pass Castle Lichtenstein and come across the border at just beyond the ruins of GrÄphang. You will see genuine mountains then, gigantic, snow-capped, with forests as dense as—as what you call a hairbrush—black, impenetrable. To the very tops of some the train climbs; it trembles over abysses. You look from the window of it down—down—down, a thousand feet, fifteen hundred, into valleys exquisite, with pink farmhouses or grey in them, the roofs weighted with large stones, the sides painted with crucifixes, or ornamented statues of the Blessed Virgin."

He loved his country and he made it vivid to her. He rambled on and on. Muriel became a more and more fascinated listener. It was not until two hours later that she thought, with a guilty start, of Jim.

She excused herself hastily and, leaving the Austrian bowing by the rail, ran to the close stateroom and her husband.

He was awake, but still sick.

"Don't bother about me," muttered Stainton as she entered—"and please don't bang the door!"

She considered him compassionately. His hair fell in disorder over his haggard face; his cheeks were faintly green.

"Can't I do something for you?" she asked, stepping forward.

Stainton failed in a smile, but feebly motioned her away.

"I am afraid not," said he—"unless you stop the ship. All I need is a little rest. You had better go back on deck. Really."

Muriel delayed.

"A man spoke to me on deck," she breathlessly confessed. "An Austrian diplomat, I think he is. My rug blew, and he rearranged it. Do you mind?"

"Mind?" asked Stainton. "Certainly not.—How this boat pitches!—Talk to him, by all means. These things are common on shipboard, I believe."

Muriel was reassured. She returned to the deck, but von Klausen was not there, and she did not see him again until evening.

Then, though she still dutifully wished that Jim were with her, she found her appetite better than ever. She ventured upon a lonely cocktail. She ate some Blue Points. Captain von Klausen sent to her table, with his card, a pint of champagne, and she ordered potage Mogador, duckling balls with turnips, cÈpes ProvenÇals, sacher tart, and ice cream.

When she reached the promenade-deck, von Klausen was already there. He had dined in evening clothes, but these were now hidden by the light rain-coat that swathed his lithe young figure from neck to heels. Muriel observed that its shoulders fitted to the shoulders of the wearer and had none of the deceptiveness of the padded shoulders to which she was once familiar in American coats.

"Have you seen the phosphorus?" he asked, as she met him at the rail. His lifted cap showed his wind-tossed blond hair, and his ruddy face gleamed with salt spray.

Muriel admitted her ignorance of phosphorus.

"But," said von Klausen, "that is one of the sights of the voyage, and I have not often on the Atlantic seen it finer than it is to-night."

He took her forward, by the starboard rail, under the bridge. Behind them were the closely curtained windows of the writing-room, forward was, only ten feet below them, the now emptied deck reserved for the third-class passengers, and beyond that, higher, rose and fell, rhythmically, the keen, dark prow. They were quite alone.

"Look there!" said von Klausen.

He pointed over the rail to where the inky surface of the sea was broken by the speed of the Friedrich Barbarossa's passage, bursting into boiling, hissing, angry patches of bright whiteness.

Timidly Muriel extended her head.

"Do you see it?" asked von Klausen. He stood close beside her.

"I see the waves," said Muriel, "and the white foam."

"But the phosphorus—you do not see that? There—and there!"

She shook her head.

"Look though," said he. "You do not look in just the correct direction. Please. Ahead, to the left. No; away a little from the ship—a little; not too much—where we have hit the water and the water recedes from us. It is beautiful—beautiful! See!"

The great boat rose on a sudden wave. Von Klausen gripped the rail with one slim hand; the other, its arm around her waist, he placed about her farther arm.

"Now!" he said, and, letting go of the rail, pointed.

Her eyes followed his finger, and there, shining green and yellow, now clear, now opalescent, from burning cores to nebulous edges, she saw what seemed to be live stars smouldering and flaming in the hearts of the waves.

"I see," she said. "It is beautiful—beautiful!"

She was, she suddenly realised, but repeating his own phrase. Why should she not? The phrase was commonplace enough; besides, the phosphorus was beautiful.

Then she became conscious of his arm about her, became conscious that this arm about her had not been unpleasant; was indignant with him, silently, and indignant with herself; made certain, in her own mind, that he had put his arm around her waist only that he might protect her—and thus soon left him and went to bed without waking Jim.

She opened her eyes after an unquiet night, to find that Stainton was somewhat improved, though too mindful of his experience of the preceding day to trust himself on deck.

"I'll wait," he decided, "till to-morrow or this evening. Yes, I think I shall manage it this evening. I'm really in good shape, but I must have eaten something that didn't agree with me. You go up, Muriel. If you see that Austrian fellow, don't forget to give him my compliments and tell him I'll probably have the pleasure of meeting him this evening. What did you say he was?"

"His name," said Muriel, "is von Klausen." She hated herself for her unreasonable disinclination to mention the Captain.

"H'm—a diplomat, did you say?"

"Something of the sort."

"As old as most diplomats then, I suppose?"

"No," said Muriel; "he's—he's rather young."

The ship began to descend a lofty wave, and Stainton lay back in his berth. His face, with its full day's growth of beard, looked grey.

"All right," he said. "Run along, dear—and look in about noon."

Muriel obeyed him. Their chairs were well forward, and when she reached them she saw von Klausen again seated in that which bore Stainton's card.

He rose at sight of her. No motion of the boat seemed ever to affect him to awkwardness.

"Your husband," he asked, bareheaded and erect while she seated herself; "he is, I trust, better?"

"He hasn't really been sick," she asseverated with what she knew, as she said it, to be wholly unnecessary emphasis.

The young Austrian performed one of his ceremonious obeisances.

"Then I shall be so pleased, so honoured, this evening to be presented to him, and I so deeply regret his having been ill. It is not good, this ocean, for the elderly."

Muriel's cheeks warmed.

"Why do you call him that?" she demanded. "I told you yesterday that he was—that he was almost young. Why do you call him elderly?"

"Forgive." Von Klausen's wide gesture expressed his regret for this error. "I had forgotten entirely. It is too bad of me to forget entirely."

"Oh," laughed Muriel, for she was already condemning her annoyance as childishness, "it doesn't matter, because it is so absurd. Only, what gave you such an impression?"

"Please?"

"The impression that he was elderly: what gave you that?"

Von Klausen manifestly hesitated.

"I do not know," he said. "I thought that—I thought that, before we sailed, on the deck here I had seen him with you. You and two American gentlemen I thought I saw: one young and stout. I thought the gentleman young and stout went ashore. Perhaps not. Perhaps it was the other that went ashore. Perhaps that was your father."

There was a moment's silence. Muriel looked intently at the ragged horizon.

"The stout man was Mr. Holt," she said at last. "He is a friend of mine—of ours."

"Ah?" said von Klausen, disinterestedly polite.

"My husband," said Muriel, "is not elderly."

"I ask his pardon," said von Klausen. He produced his bow again. He remained quite at his ease, but his manner implied a courteous wonder at any person's shame of his years. "He is then——"

"He is not so much over forty," lied Muriel, without the remotest idea why she should be thus untruthfully communicative.

Von Klausen ever so slightly turned his head away. She was immediately sure that he did it to conceal a smile.

"That is not old," she hotly contended. She made up her mind now that she did not like this graceful young foreigner. "And Jim is not so old as his age," she continued—"not nearly. He has lived half his life in our Great West, and he is as strong as a lion—and as brave."

She felt the folly of her remark as she made it, but von Klausen gave no sign of sharing that feeling. He settled himself comfortably in Jim's chair. She saw that his face was wholly innocent, his eyes only politely eager.

"Tell me of him, please," he said. "I have heard of your brave Westerners, as you call them, in your United States. I met, once in Washington, a Senator from Texas, but he did not seem to me quite—quite——Pray tell me of your husband, dear lady."

She was amazed to find that, offhand, she could not do this. She started twice and twice stopped, wondering what, after all, there was to say. Then, with a vigorous concentration, she laid hold of all that her aunt and uncle had told her of her husband, all that Holt was authority for, all that the Sunday supplement of the newspapers had printed. She narrated how he had rescued the innocent runaway from the lynching party at Grand Joining, how he had saved the lives of his camp mates during the spotted fever epidemic at Sunnyside; she told of the shooting in Alaska, the filibustering expedition, of Jim's slaying with a knife the grizzly bear that was about to strip Holt's flesh from his bones; she gave in detail the story of Jim's descent into the shaft of the "Better Days" mine, and what she had not learned she supplied to the history of the train robbers on the Rio Grande. It was all deliberate boasting, and when she ended, she felt a little ashamed.

Von Klausen, however, was visibly affected.

"He is a man to admire, your husband," said the Austrian. "Strength and bravery, bravery and strength: these, dear lady, are the two things that men envy and women love, all the world over. I wish"—his young smile grew crooked—"I wish I had them."

Muriel's red lips parted in surprise:

"But you are a soldier?"

"What of that?" shrugged von Klausen.

"Oh, but you are brave!" She was sure of it.

"How do you know?" he asked—"how do I?"

"And you—you look strong," she continued. Her black eyes passed involuntarily over his slim, well-proportioned figure. "Anybody can see that you must be strong."

"If I correctly recall my sight of your good husband," said the captain, "he could break me in two pieces across his knee."

She inwardly acknowledged this possibility, but she did not like to bear her new friend belittle himself.

"That's only because Jim is very strong," she explained.

"Perhaps," said von Klausen, "yet that was not the only kind of strength I bore in my mind, dear lady. I thought of the strength—of moral strength, strength of purpose—whether the purpose is for the good or the bad—which is two-thirds of bravery."

"And haven't you that?"

It might have been because he was altogether so new to her that the question came readily. There seemed then nothing strange in the discussion of these intimate topics.

"Who knows?" said von Klausen, quietly. "I have not yet been tried. Perhaps, should I love something or somebody, I should acquire these things." His tone lacked offence because it perfectly achieved the impersonal note. "They would come to me then, for I should love that cause or person better than my own life or my own welfare. I do not know. I have not been tried. I know only that, without the cause or the person, I have not real strength; I have not real courage. I have fought my duel; I have faced death—but I know there are forms of it that I fear. I am at least brave enough to admit that I am sometimes afraid. For the rest, I am not the type of man that women love: I need to be cared for, to be thought about, to be helped in the hundred foolish little ways—and women love men who do not take these things, but who give them."

His low voice, his simplicity, and most of all his childish manner, touched her.

"I think," she said, "that you are not fair to women."

Von Klausen pointed out across the rail.

"Look there!" said he.

A two-masted fishing boat, storm driven from the Banks to sea, swung within three or four hundred yards of them. She could see its dripping gunwale contending with the waves, the oil-skinned sailors tottering upon its deck.

"Now look there!" said von Klausen.

This time be pointed ahead, and ahead she saw, just beyond the charging prow of the imperious Friedrich, what seemed to be a thick grey curtain. It reached to the heavens and, as the liner approached it, opened like three walls: one before the prow, the other two on either side. It had all the palpability of heavy cloth.

"What is it?" she asked.

"Fog," said von Klausen, and in a moment, with the great siren of the boat shaking their very hearts, it had descended upon them.

The walls fastened. The curtains enveloped them. The thick, tangible, breath-tightening stuff wrapped them in a kind of cocoon. All the clouds of the sky seemed to have fallen. Muriel could scarcely distinguish the features of the young fellow beside her. And always, reverberating and portentous, the siren howled overhead.

"The boat!" she called into von Klausen's ear. "Isn't it odd? Only a minute ago it was there. Then I saw only its masts. Now I can't see it at all."

He called his answer.

"Once in the Bosphorus—like this—fog. I was on the prow—an express boat. We brought up a little, low ship—crowded with pilgrims. Fog—shut out—the crash—I could look down and see—faces upturned, calling. I could see them calling—could not hear. I am afraid—I am terribly afraid—of fogs."

She heard his voice break. She caught a glimpse of his face—the face of a frightened child. She felt him trembling as their shoulders touched: this soldier who had fought his duel and would not, she knew, fear the trial of battle. She was not afraid. Instinctively, she reached out toward him, to help, to comfort.

When the fog lifted as suddenly as it had fallen, the little fisherman was riding the waves safely and almost gaily far astern. The Friedrich sped unconcernedly on.

"There was no real danger, I am sure," von Klausen was saying; "these Germans I do not like, but they are good sailors—too good to hurt a smaller boat."

Then Muriel discovered that she had been holding his hand.

"I think," she said, "that I had better go and look after Mr. Stainton."