“Well, monsieur, and what is your opinion?”

“Why, to me it would seem there might be something in the suggestion of Monsieur Phinuit.”

“Ridiculous!” Monk dismissed it finally.  “Do you know, I rather fancy my own....  Liane’s up to something,” he added, explanatory; and then, as Lanyard said nothing—­“You haven’t told me yet what she was talking to you about last night just before her—­alleged fright.”

Lanyard contrived a successful offensive with his own eyebrows.

“Oh?” he said, “haven’t I?” and walked out.

Here was a new angle to consider.  Monk’s attitude hinted at a possible rift in the entente cordiale of the conspirators.  Why else should he mistrust Liane’s sincerity in asserting that she had seen Popinot?  Aside from the question of what he imagined she could possibly gain by making a scene out of nothing—­a riddle unreadable—­one wondered consumedly what had happened to render Monk suspicious of her good faith.

The explanation, when it was finally revealed to Lanyard by the most trivial of incidents, made even his own blindness seem laughable.

For three more days the life of the ship followed in unruffled tranquillity its ordered course.  Liane Delorme was afflicted with no more visions, as the captain would have called them; though by common consent the subject had been dropped upon the failure of the search, and to all seeming was rapidly fading from the minds of everybody but Liane herself and Lanyard.  This last continued to plague himself with the mystery and, maintaining always an open mind, was prepared at any time to be shockingly enlightened; that is, to discover that Liane had not cried wolf without substantial reason.  For he had learned this much at least of life, that everything is always possible.

As for Liane, she made no secret of her unabated timidity, yet suffered it with such fortitude as could not fail to win admiration.  If she was a bit more subdued, a trifle less high-spirited than was her habit, if she refused positively to sit with her back to any door or to retire for the night until her quarters had been examined, if (as Lanyard suspected) she was never unarmed for a moment, day or night, she permitted no signs of mental strain to mar the serenity of her countenance or betray the studied graciousness of her gestures.

Toward Lanyard she bore herself precisely as though nothing had happened to disturb the even adjustment of their personal relations; or, perhaps, as if she considered everything had happened, so that their rapport had become absolute; at all events, with a pleasing absence of constraint.  He really couldn’t make her out.  Sometimes he thought she wished him to believe she was not as other women and could make rational allowance for his poor response to her naive overtures.  But that seemed so abnormal, he felt forced to fall back on the theory that her declaration had been nothing more than a minor gambit in whatever game she was playing, and that consequently she bore no malice because of its failure.  No matter which explanation was the true one, no matter which keyed her temper toward him, Lanyard found himself liking the woman better, not as a woman but as another human being, than he had ever thought to.  Say what you liked, in this humour she was charming.