But, alas! these words were lost to the Pilot-fish, whose yellow head was buried with his long, powerful overhanded stroke. CHAPTER VII When Mr. Huntington Wood, at luncheon aboard the _Shark_, had asserted that the real explanation for the extraordinary devotion of the Pilot-fish was a sentimental emotion, inspired by one of the Misses Bell, Cécile found much matter for her maiden meditation. Not for one instant did it occur to this self-satisfied young lady that the cause of this infatuation might be one of her sisters. Paula was not the sort of girl of whom one would think in this connection, and Hermione was still regarded by Cécile as a mere child, though, as a matter of fact, the younger sister's superior height and dark colouring might readily have caused the careless observer to consider her the elder. Cécile was apt to be somewhat careless in her observation of anything outside of her own interests. Wherefore, she complacently appropriated Mr. Applebo in her mind as her own enamoured swain. For all of her innumerable conquests, Cécile found, in the peculiar methods of the Pilot-fish, something singularly piquant. Here was a lover who asked absolutely nothing in return for his passion. He merely desired to be in her general neighbourhood, to accomplish which he put at inconvenience nobody but himself. To be sure, many others had striven for this same result, but these had insisted on a gradual constriction of what might be considered a "general neighbourhood," eventually finding the length of a transome all too wide a separation. Where Cécile had previously been compelled to throw cold water on her all too ardent suitors, here was one who insisted on at least a half mile of this pure element, in varying depths, between them. Thinking it over in the privacy of her room, Cécile decided that this point of view was just as extreme, of its kind, as that which demanded but a single deck-chair for two people. Moreover, for Mr. Applebo to choose his own line of conduct in the matter was not good discipline. Cécile was in the habit of herself outlining the régime to be observed in affairs of this kind, and she did not care to have it prescribed for her. In addition to this, Cécile had been very much interested in the distant views which she had got of the poet, and was curious to see him at close range. All that Wood had told them of his eccentric personality had served to sharpen this interest, and the girl found herself wondering if perhaps he might not be the one who was to take captive her heart and her desire. She had always felt that the man to do this would not be the ordinary individual. It gave her a very lively emotion to picture this fair young viking threading his way through fog and storm, reef and shoal, drawn onward by his unselfish, unchanging devotion to her ideal self. Cécile decided that such fidelity merited at least the reward of some slight token of her appreciation.