are for all that human beings,
able to perceive attractions in persons other than those to whom they
are married. The wise wife, then, studies the charms of mind or person
which in others appeal to her husband, and makes them her own; or if
that is impossible cultivates other qualities quite as potent to
distract him. It results from this, that the wise wife becomes, as they
say 'all women to one man.' Now here the binnacle represents the arts
by which that wise wife, the pole, keeps her husband true by
surrounding him with charms and qualities--these magnets--sufficiently
powerful to counteract the attractions of others. Do I make myself
clear?"

"But perfectly!" Liane nodded emphatically. "What a mind to have in the
family!" she appealed to Mr. Swain. "Do you know, monsieur, it happens
often to me to wonder how I should have so clever a brother?"

"It is like that with me, too," Lanyard insisted warmly.

He made an early excuse to get away, having something new to think
about.

Mr. Mussey put up a stiffer fight than Mr. Swain, since an avowed cynic
is necessarily a Man Who Knows About Women. He gave Liane flatly to
understand that he saw through her and couldn't be taken in by all her
blandishments. At the end of twenty-four hours, however, the conviction
seemed somehow to have insidiously penetrated that only a man of his
ripe wisdom and disillusionment could possibly have any appeal to a
woman like Liane Delorme. It wasn't long after that the engine room was
illuminated by Liane's pretty ankles and Mr. Mussey was beginning to
comprehend that there was in this world one woman at least who could
take an intelligent interest in machinery.

Mr. Collison succumbed without a struggle. True to the tradition of
Southern chivalry, he ambled up to the block, laid his head upon it,
and asked for the axe. Nor was he kept long waiting...

On the seventh day the course pricked on the chart placed the
Sybarite's position at noon as approximately in mid-Atlantic.
Contemplating a prospect of seven days more of such emptiness,
Lanyard's very soul yawned.

And nothing could induce Captain Monk to hasten the passage. Mr. Mussey
asserted that his engines could at a pinch deliver twenty knots an
hour; yet day in and day out the Sybarite poked along at little better
than half that speed. It was no secret that Liane Delorme's panic
flight from Popinot had hurried the yacht out of Cherbourg harbour four
days earlier than her propo