fluence him indirectly. The initiative must appear to come from him.
It must seem to him that he, of his own accord, roused his dormant
resolution. It was a situation that called for all her feminine tact,
all her delicacy, all her instinctive diplomacy.

The round of their daily life was renewed, but now there was a change.
It was subtle, illusive, a vague, indefinite trouble in the air. Lloyd
had addressed herself to her task, and from day to day, from hour to
hour, she held to it, unseen, unnoticed. Now it was a remark dropped as
if by chance in the course of conversation; now an extract cut from a
newspaper or scientific journal, and left where Bennett would find it;
now merely a look in her eyes, an instant's significant glance when her
gaze met her husband's, or a moment's enthusiasm over the news of some
discovery. Insensibly and with infinite caution she directed his
attention to the world he believed he had abjured; she called into being
his interest in his own field of action, reading to him by the hour from
the writings of other men, or advancing and championing theories which
she knew to be false and ridiculous, but which she goaded him to deny
and refute.

One morning she even feigned an exclamation of unbounded astonishment as
she opened the newspaper while the two were at breakfast, pretending to
read from imaginary headlines.

"Ward, listen! 'The Pole at Last. A Norwegian Expedition Solves the
Mystery of the Arctic. The Goal Reached After--'"

"What!" cried Bennett sharply, his frown lowering.

"'--After Centuries of Failure.'" Lloyd put down the paper with a note
of laughter.

"Suppose you should read it some day."

Bennett subsided with a good-humoured growl.

"You did scare me for a moment. I thought--I thought--"

"I did scare you? Why were you scared? What did you think?" She leaned
toward him eagerly.

"I thought--well--oh--that some other chap, Duane, perhaps--"

"He's still at Tasiusak. But he will succeed, I do believe. I've read a
great deal about him. He has energy and determination. If anybody
succeeds it will be Duane."

"He? Never!"

"Somebody, then."

"You said once that if your husband couldn't nobody could."

"Yes, yes, I know," she answered cheerfully. "But you--you are out of
it now."

"Huh!" he grumbled. "It's not because I don't think I could if I wanted
to."

"No, you could not, Ward. Nobody can."

"But you just said you thought somebody would some day."

"