Von Klausen, as the event showed, had no impudence at all. Both he and Stainton greeted her heartily, the latter with a trifle more solicitude for her health than she thought seemly; and the Austrian was soon installed in a chair beside Stainton's. "But do I not trespass?" inquired von Klausen with his sweeping inclination. "On us?" said Jim. "Certainly not. Mighty glad to have you, I'm sure. You see, you have been extremely good to my wife while I was laid up." Von Klausen looked at the name on the chair-back: "Yet this person to whom the chair belongs?" "Oh," Muriel encouraged him, in moral reaction against her recent annoyance, "that person hasn't been on deck once since we sailed." Whereupon they all sat down, and the two men fell to talking while the band played in the sunlight and the blue-coated stewards handed about their trays. They talked, the American and the Austrian, of the differences between the United States and Austria, as noted by them, of money markets and percentages, of international law and treaties and standing armies and a host of other things that Muriel did not understand and did not care to understand. And she did not like it. As the voyage progressed, Stainton and von Klausen became more and more friendly, and Muriel more and more restless, she could not tell why. Her husband had passed his entire manhood among men and had acquired, though he did not know it, the taste for the discussion of what, because of the inferior grade of education that we grant to women, we magnificently call manly topics. These he had not enjoyed since his wedding-day, and now he was hungry for them. He did not neglect Muriel, and von Klausen often made efforts to bring her into their conversations, but her mind had never been trained to these subjects and was, moreover, now filled with a more intimate concern. For an hour she would sit beside Jim and listen to him with some admiration, but less comprehension of his technical terms, and then for fifteen minutes she would leave the pair and walk the deck alone. "To me it seems," von Klausen was one day saying, "that the great danger in your country is the disintegration of the unit of society, the break-up of the home." "Oh," said Stainton, "you're referring to our divorce laws?" The captain nodded. "Well, how are they in your country?" asked Jim. "In Austria the code of 1811 is still in force, and under it there are divorces allowed for violence, cruelty, desertion, incompatibility, and adultery. Adultery is a crime and is punishable by five years' imprisonment." "That sounds as if your code is pretty broad, too," remarked Stainton. "Ah, but it is applicable only to persons that are not Catholics, and Austria is a Catholic country." "I see. And what do the Catholics do?" "They remain married." "Always?" "The law allows them the remedy of judicial separation." Stainton was smoking a cigar. He puffed at it thoughtfully.