If only Mimika were happy he thought he might feel very optimistic about the material that Vandermeer could give him for the book he was contemplating. Indeed already he could not help sharing a little in her enthusiasm over her 'electric.' "And listen, Roy, we've got a marble swimming pool in the garden, all surrounded with heliotropes," she concluded, almost breathless, as they rolled up the long aisle of palms and pepper trees. "Is that so?" said Roy. "And you love him, Mimika?" "He's a dear," said Mimika. "And of course--" She was going to add that Captain Vandermeer would do a great deal for Roy; but she had misgivings, and checked herself. She had almost broached the subject to her lord this morning, and had checked herself then, too, feeling instinctively that Vandermeer had grown rich too recently for him to help any one but himself just at present. The introduction of brother to husband went off very well indeed. Vandermeer was so hearty, and held Roy's hand so affectionately, that when they were getting ready for dinner Mimika ventured to approach the subject again. "And listen, Julius, you'll be able to help Roy just a little, too, won't you?" she said, putting her hands up to her hair before the mirror in her bedroom. "What do you mean, Mimika, by help?" Vandermeer's voice rolled in a very unsatisfactory way from the adjoining room. "Oh, of course there's only one kind of help Roy would accept," she replied hastily. "He's going to write something about the sea, and he thinks you might give him some hints." "Why, certainly, Mimika. They say there's a book in every man's life." The voice was thoroughly hearty again now. "In mine I should say there would be a hundred books. I will tell him some splendid things." Even more jovial was the mood of Julius Vandermeer that evening after dinner; and he expanded his rosy views of the future to his brother-in-law over their cigars and a steaming rum punch flavored with lemon, which was his own invention for coping with the cold of a California night. He called it his "smudge pot." "And now, Roy," he said at last, "I hope your own affairs go well. It is a great thing, the gift of expression. I wish I had it. Ah, what books I could write! The things I have seen, things you will never see in print!"