“No; about life and the world generally.”

“Mighty little, Jack, except—­well, I study you.”

“Do you?  Then you’ll presently lose your mind:” 

Jack and most men have little idea that they are windows through which their wives see the world; and how much more of the world they know in that way than men usually suspect or wives ever tell!

He did not tell her about Henderson, but he almost resolved that when his present venture was over he would let stocks alone as speculations, and go into something that he could talk about to his wife as he talked about stocks to Carmen.

From the stranded mariners at Bar Harbor Captain Jack had many and facetious letters.  They wanted to know if his idea was that they should stick by the yacht until he got leisure to resume the voyage, or if he expected them to walk home.  He had already given orders to the skipper to patch it up and bring it to New York if possible, and he advised his correspondents to stay by the yacht as long as there was anything in the larder, but if they were impatient, he offered them transportation on any vessel that would take able-bodied seamen.  He must be excused from commanding, because he had been assigned to shore duty.  Carmen and Miss Tavish wrote that it was unfair to leave them to sustain all the popularity and notoriety of the shipwreck, and that he owed it to the public to publish a statement, in reply to the insinuations of the newspapers, in regard to the sea-worthiness of the yacht and the object of this voyage.  Jack replied that the only object of the voyage was to relieve the tedium of Bar Harbor, and, having accomplished this, he would present the vessel to Miss Tavish if she would navigate it back to the city.

The golden autumn days by the sea were little disturbed by these echoes of another life, which seemed at the moment to be a very shallow one.  Yet the time was not without its undertone of anxieties, of grave perils that seemed to sanctify it and heighten its pleasures of hope.  Jack saw and comprehended for the first time in his life the real nature of a pure woman, the depths of tenderness and self-abnegation, the heroism and calm trust and the nobility of an unworldly life.  No wonder that he stood a little in awe of it, and days when he wandered down on the beach, with only the waves for company, or sat smoking in the arbor, with an unread book in his hand, his own career seemed petty and empty.  Such moods, however, are not uncommon in any life, and are not of necessity fruitful.  It need not be supposed that Jack took it too seriously, on the one hand, or, on the other, that a vision of such a woman’s soul is ever without influence.