"Hermione, I have told you the truth, and nothing but the truth, but not the whole truth. I followed the _Shark_ because I wanted a father. But, since we met on the beach at Shoal Harbour and swam off together to the schooner, this splendid filial devotion has been quite eclipsed by something else. I have been able to think of nothing but a girl in a green bathing suit, and, when your father gave me that 'dare' to follow him all up and down the coast, I took it up because I did not want to lose her out of my daily life. The verses that I have been sending from time to time during this chase have been the only really sincere ones I ever wrote...." "Then the 'Hermione' ones that you sent to me were not sincere?" "They are not insincere, but their sentiment was directed towards the Ideal. After I met you on the beach, they were offered to the Real." "And went to Cécile..." Applebo bent his bushy brows upon her in a way curiously suggestive of Heldstrom. Hermione wondered that she had never noticed the resemblance. "Hermione," said he, "I have been a silly, careless fool and you do well to remind me of it. But do you remember having told me on the beach at Shoal Harbour that you had never seen any of my verses?" The blood rushed into the girl's face and she dropped her eyes. Hermione had thought of that lie many times, but she was in the hope that Applebo had forgotten it. "Since you didn't know me when you saw me," she answered, with a schoolgirl pout, "_I_ did not intend to put you right. What made you send the verses in the first place?" "The idea appealed to my romantic nature. I had seen you on Fifth Avenue and admired your walk. I saw you many times, but never face to face. I like to write verses, and one writes better when one has a definite object. They were harmless things, and I knew that you would not take too seriously such an act of unasked devotion on the part of one whom you had never seen. Nor did you." Hermione was silent for an instant. Then she said, almost shyly: "And afterwards..." Her violet eyes wandered fearsomely from side to side, aloft, into the fog, at her skiff, to rest finally on those of Applebo. The clear, amber ones, which seemed to have grown suddenly dark, were waiting for them. They telegraphed a message which so shook Hermione that she gave a little gasp and reached for the wire stay. The dense fog wrapped them about in its protecting folds. "Hermione," said Applebo, in his deepest voice. "I think that you had better get into your skiff and go back to the _Shark_ and tell them to stop ringing that bell. The 'afterwards' will wait until another day." "I want it now!" murmured Hermione, scarcely knowing what she said.