He loved her mightily, fiercely, but withal tenderly.  With her alone he was infinitely tender, and it seemed that something in him cried out for battle against the rest of the world.  He had his way, in port and out of it.  He brooked no opposition, and delighted to carry, against his captain’s advice, more canvas than was wise when it blew heavily.  But the yacht, like a woman, seemed a creature of his will; to know no fear when she felt his guiding hand, even though the green water ran in the scuppers.

And every day anew she scanned his face, even as he scanned the face of the waters.  What was she searching for?  To have so much is to become miserly, to fear lest a grain of the precious store be lost.  On the second day they had anchored, for an hour or two, between the sandy headlands of a small New England port, and she had stood on the deck watching his receding figure under the flag of the gasoline launch as it made its way towards the deserted wharves.  Beyond the wharves was an elm-arched village street, and above the verdure rose the white cupola of the house of some prosperous sea-captain of bygone times.  Honora had not wished to go ashore.  First he had begged, and then he had laughed as he had leaped into the launch.  She lay in a chaise longue, watching it swinging idly at the dock.

The night before he had written letters and telegrams.  Once he had looked up at her as she sat with a book in her hand across the saloon, and caught her eyes.  She had been pretending not to watch him.

“Wedding announcements,” he said.

And she had smiled back at him bravely.  Such was the first acknowledgment between them that the world existed.

“A little late,” he observed, smiling in his turn as he changed his pen, “but they’ll have to make allowances for the exigencies of the situation.  And they’ve been after me to settle down for so many years that they ought to be thankful to get them at all.  I’ve told them that after a decent period they may come to Grenoble—­in the late autumn.  We don’t want anybody before then, do we, Honora?”

“No,” she said faintly; and added, “I shall always be satisfied with you alone, Hugh.”

He laughed happily, and presently she went up on deck and stood with her face to the breeze.  There were no sounds save the musical beat of the water against the strakes, and the low hum of wind on the towering vibrant sails.  One moulten silver star stood out above all others.  To the northward, somewhere beyond the spot where sea and sky met in the hidden kiss of night, was Newport,—­were his relations and her friends.  What did they think?  He, at least, had no anxieties about the world, why should she?  Their defiance of it had been no greater than that of an hundred others on whom it had smiled benignly.  But had not the others truckled more to its conventions?  Little she cared about it, indeed, and if he had turned the prow of the ‘Adhemar’ towards the unpeopled places of the earth, her joy would have been untroubled.