"Either he or I ought to be up for examination by a medical board," stated the girl poutingly. "One of us must be crazy. The night that I stole his molasses pie--it was pretty awful pie, but I was starved--I stumbled over something in the darkness and fell into it with an awful clatter. What do you suppose it was?" "I think I could guess," smiled the other. "Not unless you knew. Personally I couldn't believe it. It felt like a boat, and it rocked like a boat, and there were the seats and the oars. I could feel them. A steel boat! Miss Van Arsdale, it isn't reasonable." "Why isn't it reasonable?' "I looked on the map in his room and there isn't so much as a mud-puddle within miles and miles and miles. Is there?" "Not that I know of." "Then what does he want of a steel boat?" "Ask him." "It might stir him up. They get violent if you question their pet lunacies, don't they?" "It's quite simple. Ban is just an incurable romanticist. He loves the water. And his repository of romance is the catalogue of Sears, Roebuck and Co. When the new issue came, with an entrancing illustration of a fully equipped steel boat, he simply couldn't stand it. He had to have one, to remind him that some day he would be going back to the coast lagoons.... Does that sound to you like a fool?" "No; it sounds delicious," declared the girl with a ripple of mirth. "What a wonderful person! I'm going over to see him to-morrow. May I?" "My dear; I have no control over your actions." "Have you made any other plans for me to-morrow morning?" inquired Miss Welland in a prim and social tone, belied by the dancing light in her eyes. "I've told you that he was romantic," warned the other. "What higher recommendation could there be? I shall sit in the boat with him and talk nautical language. Has he a yachting cap? Oh, do tell me that he has a yachting cap!" Miss Van Arsdale, smiling, shook her head, but her eyes were troubled. There was compunction in Io's next remark. "I'm really going over to see about accommodations. Sooner or later I must face the music--meaning Carty. I'm fit enough now, thanks to you." "Wouldn't an Eastern trip be safer?" suggested her hostess. "An Eastern trip would be easier. But I've made my break, and it's in the rules, as I understand them, that I've got to see it through. If he can get me now"--she gave a little shrug--"but he can't. I've come to my senses."