There was a new and spontaneous gayety in the woman's manner, but the Virginian did not know that it was new. Eben Tollman, however, marked the contrast and was at no loss in attributing it to its fancied cause. He gave no thought to the truth that she was splendidly striving to keep flying at the mast-head of her life the colors of artificial success. So each in his own way, Eben and Stuart were deceived by Conscience, one believing her indubitably guilty and the other thinking her unquestionably happy. In the elder man a ferment of bitterness was working toward the ends of deranged deviltry--and its influence was all secret so that its tincture of insanity left no mark upon his open behavior. The difficulty of maintaining a surface guise of friendliness toward the man whom he believed to be successfully wrecking his home might have appeared insuperable. In point of the actual it was made easy--even a thing of zest--by virtue of a lapse into that moral degeneracy which was no longer sane. The growth of craftiness for the forwarding of a single idea became uncanny in its purposeful efficiency and a morbid pleasure to its possessor. Eben seemed outwardly to have lain aside his strait-jacket of bigotry and to have become singularly humanized. One afternoon Stuart and Conscience went for an all-day sail. The husband had promised to accompany them, but at the last moment pleaded an excuse. It was in his plan to continue his seeming of entire trustfulness--and nothing better furthered that attitude than sending them away together in the close companionship of a sail boat--while, in reality, the presence of Ira Forman, tending tiller and sheet, was as effective as the watchfulness of a duenna or the guardianship of a harem's chief eunuch. Ira Forman rose from his task of packing the luncheon paraphernalia on the white beach near a life-saving station. He had regaled them as they picniced with narratives of shipwreck and tempest, swelling with the prideful importance of a singer of sagas. Now he bit into a plug which looked like a chunk of black cake and spat into the sand. "See that boat over yon in the norrer channal? You wouldn't never suspicion that a one-armed man was sailin' her now, would you?" "No!" Stuart spoke with the rising inflection of a flattering interest. "Has he only one arm?" Ira's nod was solemnly affirmative. "He shot the other one off oncet while he was a-gunnin' and, in a manner of speakin', it was the makin' of him. Until he lost his right hand an' had to figure out methods of doin' double shift with the left, he wasn't half as smart as what he is now. In a manner of speakin' it made a man of him."