Unconscious of all this, Liane ended her pensive moment by leaning toward Lanyard and making demoralizing eyes, while the hand left his and stole with a caressing gesture up his forearm.

“Is love, then, distasteful to you unless it be truly artless, Michael?”

“There’s so much to be said about that, Liane,” he evaded.

Monk was standing over them, a towering figure in white with the most forbidding eyebrows Lanyard had ever seen.

“Might one suggest,” he did suggest in iced accents, “that the quarter-deck is a fairly conspicuous place for this exhibition of family affection?”

Liane Delorme turned up an enquiring look, tinged slightly with an impatience which all at once proved too much for her.

“Oh, go to the devil!” she snapped in that harsh voice of the sidewalks which she was able to use and discard at will.

For a moment Monk made no reply; and Lanyard remarked a curious quivering of that excessively tall, excessively attenuated body, a real trembling, and suddenly understood that the absurd creature was being shaken by jealousy, by an enormous passion of jealousy, quite beyond his control, that shook him very much as a cat might shake a mouse.

It was too funny to be laughable, it was comic in a way to make one want to weep.  So that Lanyard, who refused to weep in public, could merely gape in speechless and transfixed rapture.  And perhaps this was fortunate; otherwise Monk must have seen that his idiotic secret was out, the sport of ribald mirth, and the situation must have been precipitated with a vengeance and an outcome impossible to predict.  As it was, absorbed in his inner torment, Monk was insensible to the peril that threatened his stilted but precious dignity, which he proceeded to parade, as it were underlining it with the eyebrows, to lend emphasis to his words.

“So long as this entertaining fiction of brother-and-sister is thought worth while,” he said with infuriated condescension, “it might be judicious not to indulge in inconsistent and unseemly demonstrations of affection within view of my officers and crew.  Suppose we...”  He choked a little.  “In short, I came to invite you to a little conference in my rooms, with Mr. Phinuit.”

“Conference?” Liane enquired coolly, without stirring.  “I know nothing of this conference.”

“Mr. Phinuit and I are agreed that Monsieur Lanyard is entitled to know more about our intentions while he has time to weigh them carefully.  We have only four more days at sea...”

Unable longer to contain himself, Lanyard left his chair with alacrity.  “But this is so delightful!  You’ve no idea, really, monsieur, how I have looked forward to this moment.”  And to Liane:  “Do come, and see how I take it, this revelation of my preordained fate.  It will be, I trust sincerely, like a man.”

With momentary hesitation, and in a temper precluding any sympathy, with his humour, the woman rose and silently followed with him that long-legged figure whose stalk held so much dramatic significance as he led to the companionway.