Durant stared at her with undisguised admiration. She was a fair size for her kind, and from the sounds that came up through her cabin skylight he judged that she had a party on board. Standing on the deck of the _Torch_ in his light flannels, Durant looked much too long for his own ridiculously tiny cutter. He was so deeply absorbed in spelling out the letters on the yacht's life-belts--_Windward_--that he was quite unaware that he himself was an object of considerable interest to a lady who had just come on deck. Literally flying as he was from the sound of his own name, he was unprepared to hear it sung out in cheerful greeting. "Mr. Durant!" He started and blinked, unable to recognize the lady of the voice. Assuming that he had once known, and since forgotten her, he had raised his cap on the chance. She was trying to say something to him now, but the noise of the struggling sail cut off her words. She turned, and seemed to be calling to somebody else. Another lady, whom the sail had hidden from his sight till now, came forward and leaned eagerly over the rail, steadying herself by the shrouds. This lady did not shout his name; but, as her eyes met his across the narrow channel, she smiled--a smile he could not place or recognize or understand; he could only raise his cap to it blindly as before. She was smiling still, while the first lady laughed, if possible in a more bewildering manner than before. "Don't you know us?" She seemed to be whispering across the gulf. He shook his head in desperation, whereupon the second lady gave orders to the men to stop hoisting the mainsail. "If you _are_ Mr. Durant, come on board!" This time the voice was distinct in the silence that followed the hoisting of the sail. He knew that lady now. And he knew the other also, though there was nothing but the turn of her head and the black accent over her eyes to remind him of Frida Tancred. XV "Well, is it all that you expected? Does the reality come up to the dream?" "It does. I never knew a dream that tallied so exactly with the reality." Frida was leaning back in a deck-chair, looking at Durant, who sat beside her on the schooner's rail.