costs in
health, yachting's worth it."

"Oh! It must be!" cried Audrey, with enthusiasm. "I've never been on a
yacht before, but I quite agree with you. I feel as if I could live on a
yacht for ever--always going to new places, you know; that's how I feel."

"You do?" Mr. Gilman exclaimed and gazed at her for a moment with a sort of
ecstasy. Audrey instinctively checked herself. "There's a freemasonry among
those who like yachting." His eyes returned to the compass. "I've kept
your secret. I've kept it like something precious. I've enjoyed keeping
it. It's been a comfort to me. Now I wonder if you'll do the same for me,
Mrs. Moncreiff?"

"Do what?" Audrey asked weakly, intimidated.

"Keep a secret. I shouldn't dream of telling it to Madame Piriac. Will you?
May I tell you?"

"Yes, if you think you can trust me," said Audrey, concealing, with amazing
ease and skill, her excitement and her mighty pleasure in the scene.... "He
wouldn't dream of telling it to Madame Piriac." ...It is doubtful whether
she had ever enjoyed anything so much, and yet she was as prim as a nun.

"I'm not a happy man, Mrs. Moncreiff. Materially, I've everything a man can
want, I suppose. But I'm not happy. You may laugh and say it's my liver.
But it isn't. You're a woman of the world; you know what life is; and yet
experience hasn't spoilt you. I could say anything to you; anything! And
you wouldn't be shocked, would you?"

"No," said Audrey, hoping, nevertheless, that he would not say "anything,
anything," but somehow simultaneously hoping that he would. It was a
disconcerting sensation.

"I want you always to remember that I'm unhappy and never to tell anybody,"
Mr. Gilman resumed.

"But why?"

"It will be a kindness to me."

"I mean, why are you unhappy?"

"My opinions have all changed. I used to think I could be independent of
women. Not that I didn't like women! I did. But when I'd left them I was
quite happy. You know what the facts of life are, Mrs. Moncreiff. Young as
you are you are older than me in some respects, though I have a long life
before me. It's just because I have a long life before me--dyspeptics are
always long-lived--that I'm afraid for the future. It wouldn't matter so
much if I was an old man."

"But," asked Audrey adventurously, "why should you be unhappy because your
opinions have changed? What opinions?" She endeavoured to be perfectly
judicial and indifferent, and yet kind.

"What opinions? Well, ab