Thinking of these things she fell into a doze, only to be pursued by vague images of her waking thoughts. Then, just before fully awakening, she saw, as in a camera-obscura, the face of Applebo regarding her with a lazy, ironical smile. This was not fancy, but an actual vision, which faded slowly as she awoke. "Bother the man!" cried Cécile, fiercely to herself. "One would think that I were an ingenue of eighteen, haunted by visions of my first beau!" Many men had called Cécile cold, unfeeling, heartless ... all of which terms were, from the man's point of view, quite correct. From Cécile's, they were wrong. As she saw it, love was a game in which one must realise, just as in football, the possibility of getting hurt. A coward or cry-baby had no right to play it. If any man could hurt her, as she was said to have hurt others, he was quite at liberty to go ahead and do it. It was, perhaps, in the hunt for the person who could do this that she had ruthlessly vivisected so many hearts. Cécile felt instinctively that she possessed no lack of deep feeling, if the right man were to claim it. But Cécile knew quite well that she was not "in love at first sight." She was momentarily fascinated, perhaps, but mingled with her sentiment there was not the least trace of sympathetic or tender interest. On the contrary, the thought of Applebo exasperated her. She felt that she would like to wake him out of his lethargy with a hat-pin or the butt-end of an oar. Something in his sleek, smooth complacency aroused the desire to do him a damage. Tired at length of the changeless object of her fancy, she tried to put it from her mind, but in vain. Then, finding herself unable to stem the tide of her imaginings, she tried drifting with them, to arrive ultimately at the startling knowledge that she was quite wild to see the poet again. She was also forced to admit, for however much she might deceive others Cécile was always candid with herself, that, were he to exert his magnetic potentialities toward that end, it was very possible that she might wind up by falling very desperately in love with Mr. Harold Applebo. Hardly had she arrived at this rather humiliating conclusion when the maid entered, handed her a note, and went out again. The post-mark was a local one, and the handwriting of the copy-plate regularity which one associates with bills. Nevertheless, Cécile's heart beat with a sudden increased force as she tore open the letter. Inside was a single sheet of corn-coloured note-paper covered by a fine regular calligraphy, which Cécile recognised at a glance as being identical with that in which some of Hermione's letters had been addressed. She held it to the waning light from her port-hole, and read as follows:-- TO CÉCILE _Lips oft sing loudest when the heart is numb; 'Tis when Love enters there, though all unseen, These scarlet courtiers, bowing to their Queen, Knowing their hollowness, are stricken dumb._