In rapid, graphic words he told her of his lonely, friendless boyhood; the long vacations, when other boys went to their homes and he remained at the boarding-school; the envy with which he was wont to listen to the recital of holiday sprees by his schoolmates. Later, at college, his peculiar personality had marked him as one apart, and, sensitive as he was, this aloofness he had accepted as a quality of his destiny. Always of a romantic, imaginative, and sentimental nature, expansiveness where his emotions were touched had brought only ridicule, hence the gradual adoption of the mocking, inscrutable pose. "There were so many times," he told her, "when I couldn't help expressing what I felt. People laughed at me. At first I fought; then I learned that it saved a lot of wear and tear to laugh back ... a little harder. So I took a pose that kept them guessing. People like to laugh at you, and they don't particularly object when you laugh at them, as long as they know what you are laughing at, and that you really are laughing. But when they are puzzled to tell whether you are really making fun of them, and if so at what, they get shy of you and leave you alone. So I was left alone. How much alone, nobody will ever know...." The mist was in Hermione's eyes before he had finished. Applebo interrupted his own narrative to look up and say: "Where are you going?" Hermione came back to earth with a sudden shock. "I'm sure I don't know," said she. "To tell the truth, I don't even know where we are. Do you?" Applebo dropped his head and peered into the fog, and raised his hand. Hermione stopped pulling and rested on her oars. Applebo slightly turned his head to listen. "I hear the swash of water ahead," he said. "That must be the far side of the inlet." "But I have been pulling more toward the mainland!" cried Hermione. "I think that you have swerved a bit. There is scarcely any air stirring, but what there is strikes me on the other cheek. Pull ahead a little." Hermione did so. Presently the swash of water on the rocks grew plainly distinct, and, a few minutes later, a dark, irregular outline reared itself through the fog. "Rocks," said Applebo. "We are on the east side of the inlet." "But I am sure that we are on the other side," said Hermione. She raised her hand. "Listen...!" From somewhere in the murk came the sound of eight bells. "I must be getting back," said Hermione. "Which way?" "Let me take the oars..."