“I accord _belief_ to a very limited number of attested facts, my friend,” he said. “That I am sitting here with you, for example. I am ready to adopt provisionally all sorts of hypotheses to explain those varied phenomena of life, the ultimate explanation of which must in any case elude me. They are hypotheses for myself--I do not announce them as dogmas for others. But--if you do not think it is too late--I will tell you a story, a rather queer experience of my own, and you can form your own hypotheses in explanation of it.” There was a chorus of approval. The doctor waited while the steward refilled the glasses at the instance of one of the group, relit his pipe, and settled himself to begin. It was in 1883. I was a young man. I had recently finished walking the hospitals, got my degree, and before settling down into practice at home had decided to see a little of the world. So I signed on for a few voyages as a ship’s doctor. At the termination of one of them I found myself at a loose end in New York. There I became friendly with the son of a man who in his young days had been a Californian “Fortyniner,” had made a pile, settled East, become a railroad speculator and made millions--William Vandermeulen. Old Vandermeulen had a delicate daughter, Pauline, then about nineteen years of age and in the incipient stages of consumption. Under medical advice, he was accustomed to take her each winter for a cruise around the West Indies in his steam yacht. That year, young Geoffrey Vandermeulen persuaded his father to ship me as medical officer. There was nothing alarming in the young girl’s condition, of course, or a much older and more experienced man would have accompanied them. She was merely delicate. We were a small party on board: the old man, his wife--a faded old lady with no personality whatever--Pauline, Geoffrey, and myself. Geoffrey was an ordinary, high-spirited young man, intelligent and a pleasant companion, but not particularly remarkable. His sister was mildly pretty but utterly devoid of attractiveness, extremely shy, and given to sitting in blank reverie over a book. Although she always had one in her hand, she read, as a matter of fact, very little. It was just an excuse for day-dreaming. Of this girl the old man, otherwise as keen as a razor and as hard as nails--commercially, I believe, he was little better than a pirate--was inordinately fond. Outside business, she was the absorbing passion of his life. There was no whim of hers that he would not gratify. It was rather pathetic to see the old scoundrel hanging over her frail innocence, all that he had of idealism centred in her threatened life. The cruise was pleasant but uneventful enough for some weeks. We pottered down through the Bahamas to Jamaica and then turned eastward with intent to visit the various ports of the Antilles as far south as Barbados.