DEAR MR. APPLEBO:--Permit me to compliment you upon the able way in which you have demonstrated your admirable seamanship. It must be, and no doubt is, a source of great satisfaction to you to prove to us your capacities. ("That will cheer him up, if he has one grain of modesty!" thought Hermione.) I must tell you, however, that, in the opinion of some of us aboard the _Shark_, the game has now gone quite far enough. We acknowledge your ability to cope with our vessel in soundings or out of them. My father is planning to sail for Bermuda in two days, and I must request that you do not follow us. Your somewhat peculiar constancy is beginning to excite a little comment outside our immediate circle, and I think it better in many ways that it should be discontinued. My father is inclined to resent your sending of verses to my sister Cécile, and perhaps it would be better to discontinue this attention also. Sincerely yours, HERMIONE CHESTER BELL. Thought Hermione, having completed this hasty epistle, "There! Something tells me that he will read this, and curl up his six-feet-two in a manner to arouse the envy of a chestnut-worm!" This heartless epistle achieved, Hermione decided for bed, but after undressing and snapping off her light, for the _Shark_ had a dynamo, she found herself still wakeful. Wherefore, she re-illuminated, and attacked the French play with greater interest, other preoccupations being disposed of. This play was one which, had her mother been alive, Hermione would never have been permitted to read. But the maternal vigilance of a Norwegian sailorman can hardly be expected to ransack the lockers of nineteen-year-old young ladies, wherefore Hermione was perusing a somewhat tarnished story, with her red lip contemptuously curled, when the little ship's clock in the saloon rang sharply four bells. Hermione shoved the play through her port-hole and was about to try for sleep again when she heard a rustling outside her door. "Hermione..." said a low voice, which she recognised as Cécile's. "Yes?" The door opened and Cécile came in. Hermione, glancing with surprise at her sister, was startled at Cécile's pale and tragic beauty. Her shimmering hair was drawn severely back from her broad, low forehead, and hung in two heavy braids well below her waist. Her grey eyes, with their dark, encircling lashes, were like stars, but ringed about in a way that alarmed Hermione. Cécile wore her white, embroidered kimono, which hung straight from her shoulders like the sacrificial robe of a Druidess. There was a bright red spot in either cheek, and her bosom was rising and falling rapidly. Cécile reminded Hermione of Goethe's "Bride of Corinth" ... that is, in appearance. "Cécile!" she cried. "What is the matter? Are you ill?" The colour flooded the face of Cécile. "I am off my head, I think!" she answered. "I can't sleep; I can't think! I don't seem to belong to myself!"