"He is a man to admire, your husband," said the Austrian. "Strength and bravery, bravery and strength: these, dear lady, are the two things that men envy and women love, all the world over. I wish"--his young smile grew crooked--"I wish I had them." Muriel's red lips parted in surprise: "But you are a soldier?" "What of that?" shrugged von Klausen. "Oh, but you are brave!" She was sure of it. "How do you know?" he asked--"how do I?" "And you--you _look_ strong," she continued. Her black eyes passed involuntarily over his slim, well-proportioned figure. "Anybody can see that you must be strong." "If I correctly recall my sight of your good husband," said the captain, "he could break me in two pieces across his knee." She inwardly acknowledged this possibility, but she did not like to bear her new friend belittle himself. "That's only because Jim is _very_ strong," she explained. "Perhaps," said von Klausen, "yet that was not the only kind of strength I bore in my mind, dear lady. I thought of the strength--of moral strength, strength of purpose--whether the purpose is for the good or the bad--which is two-thirds of bravery." "And haven't you that?" It might have been because he was altogether so new to her that the question came readily. There seemed then nothing strange in the discussion of these intimate topics. "Who knows?" said von Klausen, quietly. "I have not yet been tried. Perhaps, should I love something or somebody, I should acquire these things." His tone lacked offence because it perfectly achieved the impersonal note. "They would come to me then, for I should love that cause or person better than my own life or my own welfare. I do not know. I have not been tried. I know only that, without the cause or the person, I have not real strength; I have not real courage. I have fought my duel; I have faced death--but I know there are forms of it that I fear. I am at least brave enough to admit that I am sometimes afraid. For the rest, I am not the type of man that women love: I need to be cared for, to be thought about, to be helped in the hundred foolish little ways--and women love men who do not take these things, but who give them." His low voice, his simplicity, and most of all his childish manner, touched her. "I think," she said, "that you are not fair to women." Von Klausen pointed out across the rail. "Look there!" said he. A two-masted fishing boat, storm driven from the Banks to sea, swung within three or four hundred yards of them. She could see its dripping gunwale contending with the waves, the oil-skinned sailors tottering upon its deck. "Now look there!" said von Klausen. This time be pointed ahead, and ahead she saw, just beyond the charging prow of the imperious _Friedrich_, what seemed to be a thick grey curtain. It reached to the heavens and, as the liner approached it, opened like three walls: one before the prow, the other two on either side. It had all the palpability of heavy cloth.