themselves or find a supercilious advantage.
    How, then, could Grandcourt divine what was going on in Gwendolen's breast?
    For their behaviour to each other scandalised no observer - not even the
foreign maid warranted against sea-sickness; nor Grandcourt's own experienced
valet; still less the picturesque crew, who regarded them as a model couple in
high life. Their companionship consisted chiefly in a well-bred silence.
Grandcourt had no humorous observations at which Gwendolen could refuse to
smile, no chit-chat to make small occasions of dispute. He was perfectly polite
in arranging an additional garment over her when needful, and in handing her any
object that he perceived her to need, and she could not fall into the vulgarity
of accepting or rejecting such politeness rudely.
    Grandcourt put up his telescope and said, »There's a plantation of
sugar-canes at the foot of that rock: should you like to look?«
    Gwendolen said, »Yes, please,« remembering that she must try and interest
herself in sugar-canes as something outside her personal affairs. Then
Grandcourt would walk up and down and smoke for a long while, pausing
occasionally to point out a sail on the horizon, and at last would seat himself
and look at Gwendolen with his narrow, immovable gaze, as if she were part of
the complete yacht; while she, conscious of being looked at, was exerting her
ingenuity not to meet his eyes. At dinner he would remark that the fruit was
getting stale, and they must put in somewhere for more; or, observing that she
did not drink the wine, he asked her if she would like any other kind better. A
lady was obliged to respond to these things suitably; and even if she had not
shrunk from quarrelling on other grounds, quarrelling with Grandcourt was
impossible: she might as well have made angry remarks to a dangerous serpent
ornamentally coiled in her cabin without invitation. And what sort of dispute
could a woman of any pride and dignity begin on a yacht?
    Grandcourt had an intense satisfaction in leading his wife captive after
this fashion: it gave their life on a small scale a royal representation and
publicity in which everything familiar was got rid of, and everybody must do
what was expected of them whatever might be their private protest - the protest
(kept strictly private) adding to the piquancy of despotism.
    To Gwendolen, who even in the freedom of her maiden time had had very faint
glimpses of any heroism or sublimity, the medium that now thrust itself
everywhere before her view was this husband and her relation to him. The