The young man stood before her, his arms folded, swaying in serene certainty with the rolling rhythm of the boat. "May I sit down?" he asked, indicating, with a gesture of his hand, the row of empty chairs beside her. Muriel made, by way of reply, what she conceived to be a social masterstroke. "Certainly," she answered; "but I am here only for a few moments. I'll soon have to be running downstairs--I mean 'below'--to look after my husband." The stranger's handsome face expressed concern, yet the concern, it immediately appeared, was not because of Muriel's marital state, but because of her husband's physical plight. "I am so sorry," he said, taking Jim's chair. "He is ill then, your husband?" Muriel did not seem to like this. "Not very," said she. "He is"--she searched for a phrase characteristic of Stainton--"he is just a bit under the weather." "So," sighed the stranger, unduly comprehending. "Ah, perhaps Madame has made more voyages than has he?" "No, this is the first trip across for both of us." "Indeed? But you seem to be so excellent a sailor! Is it only youth that makes you so?" "I don't know." She was clearly, her will to the contrary, a little flattered. "I seem to take naturally to the water." "But not so your husband!" "He will be all right to-morrow." "Only to-day he is, your husband, not all right? I am so sorry. Perhaps he is not so young as you are?" Muriel felt herself again flushing. She at once became more angry at her anger than she was at what, upon reflection, she decided to be nothing more than frank curiosity on the part of her interlocutor. "Of course he is young!" she heard herself saying. The stranger either did not observe her emotions or did not care to show that he observed them. He launched at once upon an unrestrained flow of ship talk. It seemed that he was an Austrian, though of Hungarian blood on his mother's side. He had gone into the army, was an officer--already a captain, she gathered--and he had been serving for some months as an attache of his country's legation in Washington. Now he had been transferred to the legation at Paris. Muriel noted that he spoke with many gestures. She tried to dislike these as being un-American, and when she found it hard to dislike what were, after all, graceful adjuncts to his conversation and frequent aids to his adequate expression, she was annoyed and tried to indicate her annoyance. "I thought you were a soldier?" she said. With another European bow he produced a silver case engraved with his arms, drew from it a card, which he handed to Muriel. The card announced him as Captain Franz Esterhazy von B. von Klausen. "But yes," he said. "Please." Muriel slipped the card into her belt. "You seem to like the diplomatic service better," she said. Von Klausen shrugged. "I go where I am sent," said he. "Would you ever go to war?" she persisted. "If I had to. Why not?" "And fight?"