's?"

"Oh, no," said Gwendolen, indifferently, finding all places alike
undescribable as soon as she imagined herself and her husband in them.
"I only wondered how long you would like this."

"I like yachting longer than anything else," said Grandcourt; "and I
had none last year. I suppose you are beginning to tire of it. Women
are so confoundedly whimsical. They expect everything to give way to
them."

"Oh, dear, no!" said Gwendolen, letting out her scorn in a flute-like
tone. "I never expect you to give way."

"Why should I?" said Grandcourt, with his inward voice, looking at her,
and then choosing an orange--for they were at table.

She made up her mind to a length of yatching that she could not see
beyond; but the next day, after a squall which had made her rather ill
for the first time, he came down to her and said--

"There's been the devil's own work in the night. The skipper says we
shall have to stay at Genoa for a week while things are set right."

"Do you mind that?" said Gwendolen, who lay looking very white amidst
her white drapery.

"I should think so. Who wants to be broiling at Genoa?"

"It will be a change," said Gwendolen, made a little incautious by her
languor.

"_I_ don't want any change. Besides, the place is intolerable; and one
can't move along the roads. I shall go out in a boat, as I used to do,
and manage it myself. One can get a few hours every day in that way
instead of striving in a damnable hotel."

Here was a prospect which held hope in it. Gwendolen thought of hours
when she would be alone, since Grandcourt would not want to take her in
the said boat, and in her exultation at this unlooked-for relief, she
had wild, contradictory fancies of what she might do with her
freedom--that "running away" which she had already innumerable times
seen to be a worse evil than any actual endurance, now finding new
arguments as an escape from her worse self. Also, visionary relief on a
par with the fancy of a prisoner that the night wind may blow down the
wall of his prison and save him from desperate devices, insinuated
itself as a better alternative, lawful to wish for.

The fresh current of expectation revived her energies, and enabled her
to take all things with an air of cheerfulness and alacrity that made a
change marked enough to be noticed by her husband. She watched through
the evening lights to the sinking of the moon with less of awed
loneliness than was habitual to her--nay, w