and--while Phinuit lowered
his feet and put away his penknife--considerately placed a chair for
Liane in the position in which she preferred to sit, with her face
turned a little from the light. Nor would his appreciation of the
formality which seemed demanded by Monk's solemn manner, permit him to
sit before the captain had taken his own chair behind the desk.

Then, however, he discovered the engaging spontaneity of a schoolboy at
a pantomime, and drawing up a chair sat on the edge of it and addressed
himself with unaffected eagerness to the most portentous eyebrows in
captivity.

"Now," he announced with a little bow, "for what, one imagines, Mr.
Phinuit would term the Elaborate Idea!"

XXIV

HISTORIC REPETITION

Phinuit grinned, then smothered a little yawn. Liane Delorme gave a
small, disdainful movement of shoulders, and posed herself becomingly,
resting an elbow on the arm of her chair and inclining her cheek upon
two fingers of a jewelled hand. Thus she sat somewhat turned from Monk
and Phinuit, but facing Lanyard, to whom her grave but friendly eyes
gave undivided heed, for all the world as if there were no others
present: she seemed to wait to hear him speak again rather than to care
in the least what Monk would find to say.

Captain Monk filled in that pause with an impressive arrangement of
eyebrows. Then, fixing his gaze, not upon Lanyard, but upon the point
of a pencil with which his incredibly thin fingers traced elaborate but
empty designs upon the blotter, he opened his lips, hemmed in warning
that he was about to speak, and seemed tremendously upset to find that
Liane was inconsiderately forestalling him.

Her voice was at its most musical pitch, rather low for her, fluting,
infinitely disarming and seductive.

"Let me say to you, mon ami, that--naturally I know what is coming--I
disapprove absolutely of this method of treating with you."

"But it is such an honour to be considered important enough to be
treated with at all!"

"You have the true gift for sarcasm: a pity to waste it on an audience
two-thirds incapable of appreciation."

"Oh, you're wrong!" Phinuit declared earnestly. "I'm appreciative, I
think the dear man's immense."

"Might I suggest"--the unctuous tones of Captain Monk issued from under
mildly wounded eyebrows--"if any one of us were unappreciative of
Monsieur Lanyard's undoubted talents, he would not be with us tonight."

"You might suggest it," Phinuit asse