She dressed hurriedly and warmly, bundling her hair under a velours hat

and ramming a pin through both.

"Denny?" she called.

There was no answer. He was on deck, probably.

An odd scene awaited her in the main salon. Cleigh, senior, stood before

the phonograph listening to Caruso. The roll of the yacht in nowise

disturbed the mechanism of the instrument. There was no sudden sluing of

the needle, due to an amateurish device which Cleigh himself had

constructed. The son, stooping, was searching the titles of a row of new

novels. The width of the salon stretched between the two.

"Good morning, everybody!"

There was a joyousness in her voice she made not the least attempt to

conceal. She was joyous, alive, and she did not care who knew it.

Dennison acknowledged her greeting with a smile, a smile which was a

mixture of wonder and admiration. How in the world was she to be made to

understand that they were riding a deep-sea volcano?

"Nothing disturbed you through the night?" asked Cleigh, lifting the pin

from the record.

"Nothing. I lay awake for an hour or two, but after that I slept like a

log. Have I kept you waiting?"

"No. Breakfast isn't quite ready," answered Cleigh.

"What makes the sea so yellow?"

"All the big Chinese rivers are mud-banked and mud-bottomed. They pour

millions of tons of yellow mud into these waters. By this afternoon,

however, I imagine we'll be nosing into the blue. Ah!"

"Breakfast iss served," announced Togo the Jap.

The trio entered the dining salon in single file, and once more Jane found

herself seated between the two men. One moment she was carrying on a

conversation with the father, the next moment with the son. The two

ignored each other perfectly. Under ordinary circumstances it would have

been strange enough; but in this hour, when no one knew where or how this

voyage would end! A real tragedy or some absurd trifle? Probably a trifle;

trifles dug more pits than tragedies. Perhaps tragedy was mis-named. What

humans called tragedy was epic, and trifles were real tragedies. And then

there were certain natures to whom the trifle was epical; to whom the

inconsequent was invariably magnified nine diameters; and having made a

mistake, would die rather than admit it.

To bring these two together, to lure them from behind their ramparts of

stubbornness, to see them eventually shake hands and grin as men will who

recognize that they have been playing the fool! She became fired with the

idea. Only she must not move prematurely; there must arrive some

psychological moment.




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