When the rubber was finished Cathewe came into the breach by suggesting that they two, he and his partner, should take the air for a while; and Hildegarde thanked him with her eyes.  They tramped the port side, saying nothing but thinking much.  His arm was under hers to steady her, and he could feel the catch each time she breathed, as when one stifles sobs that are tearless.  Ah, to hold her close and to shield her; but a thousand arms may not intervene between the heart and the pain that stabs it.  He knew; he knew all about it, and there was murder in his thought whenever his thought was of Breitmann.  To be alone with him somewhere, and to fight it out with their bare hands.

She had been schooled in the art of acting, but not in the art of dissimulation; she had been of the world without having been worldly; and sometimes she was as frank and simple as a child.  And worldliness makes a buffer in times like these.  Cathewe thanked God for his own shell, toughened as it had been in the war of life.

“Look!” he exclaimed, thankful for the diversion.  “There goes a big liner for Sandy Hook.  How cheerful she looks with all her lights!  Everybody’s busy there.  There will be greetings to-morrow, among the sundry curses of those who have not declared their Parisian models.”

They paused by the rail and followed the great ship till all the lights had narrowed and melted into one; and then, almost at once, the limitless circle of pitching black water seemed tenanted by themselves alone.

Without warning she bent swiftly and kissed the hand which lay upon the rail.  “How kind you are to me!”

“Oh, pshaw!” But the touch of her lips shook his soul.

Cathewe was one of those sure, quiet men, a staff to lean on, that a woman may find once in a life-time.  They are, as a usual thing, always loving deeply and without success, but always invariably cheerful and buoyant, genuine philosophers.  They are not given much to writing sonnets or posing; and they can stand aside with a brave heart as the other man takes the dream out of their lives.  This is not to affirm that they do not fight stoutly to hold this dream; simply, that they accept defeat like good soldiers.  There are many heroes who have never heard war’s alarms.  He knew that the whole heart of Hildegarde von Mitter had yielded to another.  But it had been thrown, as it were, against a wall; there was this one hope, dimly burning, that some day he might catch it on the rebound.

“Why are not all men like you?” she asked.

“The world would not be half so interesting.  Some men shall be fortunate and others shall not; everything has to balance in some way.  I am necessary to one side of the scales, as a weight.”  He spoke with a levity he by no means felt.

“You are always making sport of yourself.”

“Would it be wise to weep?  Not at all.  I laugh because I enjoy it, just the same as I enjoy hunting or going on voyages of discovery.”