"Dear Mr. Burnarde," ran the little note pinned to the page. "Dear Mr. Burnarde" (Oh, the delicious camouflage of the formality). Please, I beg of you do not be angry with me because I am submitting no prose theme this week! I just can't, somehow! I'm all verse these days! What do you think [54] about this one? There are oodles and oodles more lines to it of course, but this is to be the recurrent refrain: He who made Hunger, Love, and the Sea, Made three tides which have got to be! "Oh, of course, I know you'll say that the word 'got' isn't particularly poetical and all that. But it's simply got to be 'got,' don't you see? Why----" Right in the middle of the unfinished sentence he crumpled the page in his hand. Merciful Heavens, if she was innocent why hadn't she written him? Or even if she were sorry--only? Or even if----If people had any explanations to give they usually gave them to you, didn't they? "Gave" them to you? _Forced_ them on you, rather, didn't they? Fairly _hurled_ them at you? This staking all for love? Yes, surely! Social position! Professional reputation! Even his mother's heart! _For love_? Yes, that was it! But suppose--the object of such love--fairly flaunted herself as being neither loving--nor lovable? Maddened anew by the futility of it all he plunged down at his desk and [55] began to write a letter--and tore that letter up! And began another and tore that up! And began another! Merciful Heavens! he suffered. Was his hand palsied? His brain blighted? Were there no live words left in all the world--except just those which crowded every other sane thought out of his mind? "He who made hunger, love, and the sea, Made three tides which have got to be!" [56] III TAKEN all in all, _mileage_ undoubtedly is just about the paltriest form of separation that can occur between two people. If only Fate would break its impish habit of always and forever introducing such perfectly unexpected things into mileage! Even Fate though at just this time hadn't quite made up its mind perhaps just what it intended to do with little Daphne Bretton! Given good food, a brave heart, and any reasonable amount of diversion, most young people outgrow their sins and even their mistakes almost as soon as they outgrow their clothes. But to outgrow a punishment is quite a different matter! People who deal out punishments ought to think about that! Daphne Bretton and her father had to think a good deal about it. Daphne especially! Totally uninjured by her mistake but pretty badly crippled by her punishment the world looked very dark to Daphne. [57] Being only eighteen and having thus far evolved no special philosophy of her own concerning the best way to meet Life's inevitable disasters it was rather fortunate perhaps in the present emergency that she had at least her father's philosophy to fall back upon. Her father's philosophy was so amazingly simple.