3.15, and everything packed but what they had on. It was a clear
reprieve, till 3.15 at any rate.

There could be no doubt, thought Rosalind to herself, that her
husband's conversation with Vereker had made him easier in his mind
than when she saw him last, just after breakfast. No doubt he was all
the better, too, for the merpussy's account of her exploit on the
beach; of how she managed to overrule old Gabriel and get a
machine put down, contrary to precedent, common caution, and public
opinion--even in the face of urgent remonstrance from her Swiss
acquaintance, almost as good a swimmer as herself; how she had picked
out a good big selvage-wave to pop in under, and when she got beyond
it enjoyed all the comfort incidental to being in bed with the door
locked. Because, you see, she exaggerated. However, one thing she
said was quite true. There were no breakers out beyond the said
selvage-wave, because the wind had fallen a great deal, and seemed
to have given up the idea of making any more white foam-crests for
the present. But there would be more wind again in the night, said
authority. It was only a half-holiday for Neptune.

Sally's bracing influence was all the stronger from the fact of her
complete unconsciousness of anything unusual. Her mother had said
nothing to her the day before of the revival of Baron Kreutzkammer,
nor had Dr. Conrad, acting under cautions given. And all Sally knew of
the wakeful night was that her mother had found Fenwick walking about,
unable to sleep, and had said at breakfast he might just as well have
his sleep out now. To which she had agreed, and had then gone away to
see if "the Tishies," as she called them, were blown away, and had met
the doctor coming to see if _she_ was. So she was in the best of moods
as an antidote to mind-cloudage. And Fenwick, under the remedy, seemed
to her no more unlike himself than was to be expected after not a wink
till near daylight. The object of this prolixity is that it may be
borne in mind that Sally never shared her mother's or her undeclared
lover's knowledge of the strange mental revival caused--as seemed most
probable--by the action of the galvanic battery on the previous day.

* * * * *

Vereker walked back to his Octopus, whom he had forsaken for an
unusually long time, with his brain in a whirl at the strange
revelation he had just heard. His medical experience had put him well
on his guard anent one poss