Mellow voices of bell metal swelled and died on the midnight air while, lounging against the motor car—­with Liane at his side registering more impatience than he thought the occasion called for—­Lanyard listened, stared, wondered, the breath of the sea sweet in his nostrils, its flavour in his throat, his vision lost in the tangled web of masts and cordage and funnels that stencilled the moon-pale sky:  the witching glamour of salt water binding all his senses with its time-old spell.

It was quiet there upon the quay.  Somewhere a winch rattled drowsily and weary tackle whined; more near at hand, funnels were snoring and pumps chugging with a constant, monotonous noise of splashing.  On the landward side, from wine shops across the way, came blurred gusts of laughter and the wailing of an accordeon.  The footfalls of a watchman, or perhaps a sergent de ville, had lonely echoes.  The high electric arcs were motionless, and the shadows cast by their steel-blue glare lay on the pave as if painted in lampblack.

Dupont, the road to Paris, seemed figments of some dream dreamed long ago...

The tip of a pretty slipper, tapping restlessly, continued to betray Liane’s temper.  But she said nothing.  Privately Lanyard yawned.  Then Jules, tagged by three men with the fair white jackets and shuffling gait of stewards, sauntered into view from behind two mountains of freight, and announced:  “All ready, madame.”  Liane nodded curtly, lingered to watch the stewards attack the jumble of luggage, saw her jewel case shouldered, and followed the bearer, Lanyard at her elbow, Jules remaining with the car.

The steward trotted through winding aisles of bales and crates, turned a corner, darted up a gangplank to the main-deck of a small steam vessel, so excessively neat and smart with shining brightwork that Lanyard thought it one uncommon tender indeed, and surmised a martinet in command.  It seemed curious that there were not more passengers on the tender’s deck; but perhaps he and Liane were among the first to come aboard; after all, they were not to sail before morning, according to the women.  He apprehended a tedious time of waiting before he gained his berth.  He noticed, too, a life ring lettered sybarite, and thought this an odd name for a vessel of commercial utility.  Then he found himself descending a wide companionway to one of the handsomest saloons he had ever entered, a living room that, aside from its concessions to marine architecture, might have graced a residence on Park Lane or on Fifth avenue in the Sixties.

Lanyard stopped short with his hand on the mahogany handrail.

“I say, Liane! haven’t we stumbled into the wrong pew?”

“Wrong pew?” The woman subsided gracefully into a cushioned arm-chair, crossed her knees, and smiled at his perplexity.  “But I do not know what is that ‘wrong pew.’”

“I mean to say... this is no tender, and it unquestionably isn’t an Atlantic liner.”