Hermione nodded, and they shifted places. She was not tired, but she wanted to see the strong, lithe body in action. Applebo picked up the light oars and, without so much as a glance over his shoulder, pulled off apparently at random into the fog. As he rowed, he told her about his voyaging in pursuit of the _Shark_. Hermione was amazed to learn how arduous this had sometimes been. Secure and comfortable aboard the big, staunch _Shark_, it was not easy to realise the conditions to be sometimes confronted by a little boat like the _Daffodil_. "You are like a gull..." she said. "Hello ... there's a boat ahead!" "The yawl," said Applebo, indifferently. Hermione opened her violet eyes very wide. "I must have been pulling in a circle!" she exclaimed. "You described quite an arc." "But how did you know?" "I felt it. Some of us have that instinct of the hound and the sea-turtle and the gull. It's not subject to analysis. At sea, I never take a sight ... but I use the lead a good deal." He laid the skiff alongside. "Before I go," said Hermione, "I want to peep into the cabin. May I?" "If you like. I'd be more hospitable, but something tells me that it is not convenable, and, since you are Hermione, you are still a mere child ... how old...?" "Twenty." "An infant in arms! However ... so long as they are the proper arms ... and I'm so much older that it doesn't matter. Come aboard." He stepped out and extended one hand to Hermione, making fast the skiff with the other. "How old are you?" asked Hermione. "Getting senile. I have been out of college four years; that makes me twenty-five. At such an age there are no longer rules of propriety; one thinks only of the grave. How do you like my cabin?" Hermione, with a delicious sense of wrongdoing, examined with rapture the cabin of the _Daffodil_. This inspection was brief to the point of being cursory, and, as she came up through the companionway, she heard the bell of the _Shark_ again tolling its insistent summons. "And to think," she cried, "that you should have followed us all of those weary knots on this little thing! And just because you knew that your father was aboard!" "Hermione, filial affection was _not_ the lure of the last two thousand miles." "What was...?" "Get in your skiff and I will tell you." Hermione's heart stampeded furiously. It was frightened less at these discreet words than at a sudden flash in the clear eyes of her companion. Every sentient impulse warned her to get immediately into her skiff and row away, just as fast as she could. But other and stronger impulses made this craven course exceedingly difficult. She did not want to row off into the cold, grey mist and leave new problems to be solved by the lonely, romantic figure beside her. She felt that he needed her, and this need, to a person of Hermione's rich nature, was a far more impelling force than any need of her own.