rare quality of friendship; she had found more,—­a man who was a friend and yet a lover, but who could curb the strong passion to the semblance and docility of the gentler feeling.  And when at last she should give the long-desired sign, the single glance that bids love speak, she would find such a lover as was not even dreamt of among the gods of the Greeks, nor yet among berserk heroes of ice and storm and battle.  He felt to-day that he could endure to the end, for the end was worthy all endurance.

And now he sat by her side and looked down into her face when she spoke, and they laughed together.  Verily was Claudius the proudest man in all earth’s quarters, and his blue eyes flashed a deep fire, and his nostrils expanded with the breath of a victory won.  Mr. Bellingham, on the other side of the table, sparkled with a wit and grace that were to modern table-talk what a rare flagon of old madeira, crusted with years, but brimming with the imperishable strength and perfume of eternal youth, might be to a gaudily-ticketed bottle of California champagne, effervescent, machine-made, cheap, and nasty.  And his glance comprehended the pair, and loved them.  He thought they were like a picture of the North and of the South; and the thought called up memories in his brave old breast of a struggle that shook the earth to her foundations, and made him think of problems yet unsolved.  He sat in his place silent for some minutes, and the broad brown hand stroked the snowy beard in deep thought, so that the conversation flagged, and the Duke began to talk about the voyage.  But Mr. Bellingham took his brimming glass, filled with the wine that ripened in the sun when he himself was but a little boy, and he held it a moment to the light; the juice was clearer now than it had been that day sixty years, and the hand that held the goblet was as a hand of iron for strength and steadiness, though the dark fingers might have plucked the grapes on the day they were pressed.  And with an old-time motion he carried it to his lips, then paused one instant, then drank it slowly, slowly to the last drop.  It was a toast, but the speech was unspoken, and none knew to whom or to what he drained the measure.  In a little time he began to speak again; the conversation turned upon mutual friends in England, and the dinner was at an end.

But all through the evening Claudius never left Margaret’s side.  He felt that he was bridging over the difference between life at sea and life on land—­that he was asserting his right to maintain in a drawing-room the privileges he had gained on the deck of the Streak.  And Margaret, moreover, was especially friendly to-night, for she too felt the difference, and recognised that, after all, life on shore is the freer.  There are certain conventionalities of a drawing-room that a man is less likely to break through, more certain to remember, than the unwritten rules of cruising etiquette.  Most men who have led a free life are a little less likely to make love under the restraint of a white tie than they are when untrammelled by restraints of dress, which always imply some restraint of freedom.