"Nothing, dearest! No, nothing!... Indeed, nothing at all!"

"Gerry, what _was_ it?"

"What was what, dear?"

"What made you leave off so suddenly?"

For the slightly intermittent movement of his cheek on her hair--what
hairy thing is there that does not love to be stroked?--had stopped;
and his hand that held hers had slipped from it, and rested for a
moment on his own forehead.

"It's gone now. It was a sort of recurrence. I haven't been having
them lately...."

"Come and sit down, love. There, now, don't fidget! What was it
about?" Does he look pale?--thinks Rosalind--or is it only the
vanished glow?

He is uncommunicative. Suppose they go out for a turn before dinner,
he suggests. They can walk down to the jetty, to meet Sarah and her
medical adviser. Soon said, soon settled. Ten minutes more, and they
are on their way to the fisher dwellings: experiencing three-quarters
of a gale, it appears, on the testimony of an Ancient Mariner in a
blue and white-striped woollen shirt, who knows about things.

"That was _very_ queer, that recurrence!" Thus Gerry, after leaving
the Ancient Mariner. "It was just as the little edge of the sun went
behind the bank. And what do you think my mind hooked it on to, of all
things in the world?" Rosalind couldn't guess, of course. "Why, a big
wheel I was trying to stop, that went slowly--slowly--like the sun
vanishing. And then just as the sun went it stopped."

"Was there anything else?" Entire concealment of alarm is all Rosalind
can attend to.

"No end of things, all mixed up together. One thing very funny. A great
big German chap.... I say, Rosalind!"

"What, Gerry darling?"

"Do you recollect, when we were in Switzerland, up at that last
high-up place, Seelisberg--Sonnenberg--do you remember the great fat
Baron that gave me those cigars, and sang?"

"Remember the Baron? Of course I do. Perfectly!" Rosalind contrived
a laugh. "Was he in it?" Perhaps this was rash. But then, not to say
it would have been cowardice, when it was on her tongue-tip. Let the
nettle be grasped.

"He was in it, singing and all. But the whole thing was mixed up and
queer. It all went, quite suddenly. And I should have lost him out
of it, as one loses a dream, if it hadn't been for seeing him in
Switzerland. It was something to hold on by. Do you understand?"

"I think I do. _I_ had forgotten what I was dreaming about when I
woke on the sofa and talked that nonsense. But I held on to the na