nd the flagstaff with the south cone hoisted,
holding their heads on to all appearance. She said to herself:
"Foolish fellow, why can't he speak?" And her husband answered either
her thought or her words--though he could hardly have heard them as
he sat driving his pen furiously through letters--with: "He'll have
to confess up, Rosey, you'll see, before he goes."

She made no reply; but, feeling a bit tired, lay down to rest on
the sofa. And so powerful was the sea air, and the effect of a fair
allowance of exercise, that she fell into a doze in spite of the
intensely wakeful properties of Mrs. Lobjoit's horsehair sofa, which
only a corrugated person could stop on without a maintained effort, so
that sound sleep was impossible. She never became quite unconscious of
the scratching pen and the moaning wind; so, as she did not sleep, yet
did not want to wake, she remained hovering on the borderland of
dreams. One minute she thought she was thinking, sanely, about Sally
and her silent lover--always uppermost in her thoughts--the next, she
was alive to the absurdity of some dream-thing one of them had
suddenly changed to, unnoticed. Once, half awake, she was beginning
to consider, seriously, whether she could not legitimately approach
the Octopus on the subject, but only to find, the moment after, that
the Octopus (while remaining the same) had become the chubby little
English clergyman that had married her to Gerry at Umballa, twenty
years ago. Then she thought she would wake, and took steps towards
doing it; but, as ill-luck would have it, she began to speak before
she had achieved her purpose. And the result was: "Do you remember the
Reverend Samuel Herrick, Gerry, at Umb----Oh dear! I'm not awake....
I was talking nonsense." Gerry laughed.

"Wake up, love!" said he. "Do your fine intelligence justice! What was
it you said? Reverend Samuel who?"

"I forget, darling. I was dreaming." Then, with a nettle-grasping
instinct, as one determined to flinch from nothing, "Reverend Samuel
Herrick. What did you think I said?"

"Reverend Samuel Herrick or Meyrick.... 'Not negotiable.' I don't mean
the Reverend Sam, whoever he is, but the payee whose account I'm
enriching." He folded the cheque he had been writing into its letter
and enveloped it. But he paused on the brink of its gummed edge,
looking over it at Rosalind, who was still engaged getting quite
awake. "I know the name well enough. He's some chap! I expect you saw
him