, at least, had no anxieties about the world,
why should she? Their defiance of it had been no greater than that of
an hundred others on whom it had smiled benignly. But had not the others
truckled more to its conventions? Little she cared about it, indeed, and
if he had turned the prow of the 'Adhemar' towards the unpeopled places
of the earth, her joy would have been untroubled.

One after another the days glided by, while with the sharpened senses of
a great love she watched for a sign of the thing that slept in him--of
the thing that had driven him home from his wanderings to re-create his
life. When it awoke, she would have to share him; now he was hers
alone. Her feelings towards this thing did not assume the proportions
of jealousy or fear; they were merely alert, vaguely disquieting. The
sleeping thing was not a monster. No, but it might grow into one, if its
appetite were not satisfied, and blame her.

She told herself that, had he lacked ambition, she could not have
loved him, and did not stop to reflect upon the completeness of her
satisfaction with the Viking. He seemed, indeed, in these weeks, one
whom the sea has marked for its own, and her delight in watching him as
he moved about the boat never palled. His nose reminded her of the prow
of a ship of war, and his deep-set eyes were continually searching the
horizon for an enemy. Such were her fancies. In the early morning
when he donned his sleeveless bathing suit, she could never resist the
temptation to follow him on deck to see him plunge into the cold ocean:
it gave her a delightful little shiver--and he was made like one of the
gods of Valhalla.

She had discovered, too, in these intimate days, that he had the
Northman's temperament; she both loved and dreaded his moods. And
sometimes, when the yacht glided over smoother seas, it was his pleasure
to read to her, even poetry and the great epics. That he should be fond
of the cruel Scotch ballads she was not surprised; but his familiarity
with the book of Job, and his love for it, astonished her. It was a
singular library that he had put on board the 'Adhemar'.

One evening when the sails flapped idly and the blocks rattled, when
they had been watching in silence the flaming orange of the sunset above
the amethystine Camden hills, he spoke the words for which she had been
waiting.

"Honora, what do you say to going back to Grenoble?"

She succeeded in smiling at him.

"Whenever you like, Hugh,"