For a moment Monk made no reply; and Lanyard remarked a curious
quivering of that excessively tall, excessively attenuated body, a real
trembling, and suddenly understood that the absurd creature was being
shaken by jealousy, by an enormous passion of jealousy, quite beyond
his control, that shook him very much as a cat might shake a mouse.
It was too funny to be laughable, it was comic in a way to make one
want to weep. So that Lanyard, who refused to weep in public, could
merely gape in speechless and transfixed rapture. And perhaps this was
fortunate; otherwise Monk must have seen that his idiotic secret was
out, the sport of ribald mirth, and the situation must have been
precipitated with a vengeance and an outcome impossible to predict. As
it was, absorbed in his inner torment, Monk was insensible to the peril
that threatened his stilted but precious dignity, which he proceeded to
parade, as it were underlining it with the eyebrows, to lend emphasis
to his words.
"So long as this entertaining fiction of brother-and-sister is thought
worth while," he said with infuriated condescension, "it might be
judicious not to indulge in inconsistent and unseemly demonstrations of
affection within view of my officers and crew.
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