Stephen woke with a start, and turned in a dim and growing amazement at the stiffness of his limbs, the painful heaviness of his breath. Slowly, as the little Yale man sat chattering by his bed, the troubled events of the night before came back to him--the foolhardy plunge from the breakwater, the interval of blank nothingness, the agonized struggle back into life, the hands working at his chest and his limbs; then the slow opening of his eyelids under the frightened face of young Martin, bending over him. “Yes, I did make an ass of myself, and no mistake,” he mused, aloud, in a hoarse and broken voice. “Nonsense!” cried Martin. “A cramp--why, that’s likely to come over anybody. No one could laugh at you for having a cramp; though Miss May----” he stopped short, with a half-embarrassed laugh. “What about Miss May?” asked Stephen, trying to conceal the agitation he felt. “Why, nothing. Only, I met her just now going out to sail with some of the fellows. They all stopped to ask how you were. She didn’t say a word--stood there looking queer, somehow. So I told them you were feeling better this morning with all the water pumped out of you; and she began to laugh; didn’t say a word, just stood and laughed, till, upon my word, I thought she was going to cry. She’s a funny one and no mistake--half fish, I call her.” Glyn was silent. So this was the way that his narrow escape from drowning appeared to Elfrida--to her for whom he had risked not only his life, but his dignity as well. “Can I do anything for you, old chap?” asked the other, with good-natured solicitude. “Thanks, I think you have done quite enough for me already.” “Pshaw!” cried Martin, rising in the alarm of approaching thanks. “It was nothing. And now I’ve got to be going downstairs. As for you, my boy, you’d better lie still to-day. You don’t want to get pneumonia out of this, do you?” But in spite of timely warnings, in spite of aching limbs and a dizzy head, it was not very long after this that Stephen rose, dressed himself and went slowly downstairs. From the few people sitting about on the piazza waiting for lunch--ladies with toy poodles, old gentlemen with newspapers--Glyn received congratulations on his escape, and remarks of a more or less trying facetiousness. Of course Elfrida was not there; of course she had not yet returned from her sail. And even if she had, what difference should it make to him?