"

"And how long could you have kept afloat if the fog had not lifted?" he
inquired with gentle sarcasm. To which, adroitly adjusting hair and
kerchief, she made no answer. So he added: "There is supposed to be a
difference between mature courage and the fool-hardiness of the
unfledged--"

"What?"

The quick close-clipped question cutting his own words silenced him.
And, as he made no reply, she continued to twist the red kerchief around
her hair, and to knot it securely, her doubtful glance returning once or
twice to his amused face.

When all had been made fast and secure she rested one arm on the gunwale
and dropped the other across her knees, relaxing in every muscle a
moment before departure. And, somehow, to Hamil, the unconscious grace
of the attitude suggested the "Resting Hermes"--that sculptured
concentration of suspended motion.

"You had better not go just yet," he said, pointing seaward.

She also had been watching the same thing that he was now looking at, a
thin haze which again became apparent over the Gulf-stream.

"Do you think it will thicken?" she asked.

"I don't know; you had a close call last time--"

"There was no danger."

"I think there was danger enough; you were apparently headed straight
out to sea--"

"I heard a ship's bell and swam toward it, and when the fog lifted I
found you."

"Why didn't you swim toward the shore? You could hear the surf--and a
dog barking."

"I"--she turned pink with annoyance--"I suppose I was a trifle tired--if
you insist. I realised that I had lost my bearings; that was all. Then I
heard a ship's bell.... Then the mist lifted and I saw you--but I've
explained all that before. _Look_ at that exasperating fog!"

Vexation silenced her; she sat restless for a few seconds, then:

"What do you think I had better do?"

"I think you had better try to endure me for a few minutes longer. I'm
safer than the fog."

But his amusement left her unresponsive, plainly occupied with her own
ideas.

Again the tent of vapour stretched its magic folds above the boat and
around it; again the shoreward shapes faded to phantoms and disappeared.

He spoke again once or twice, but her brief replies did not encourage
him. At first, he concluded that her inattention and indifference must
be due to self-consciousness; then, slightly annoyed, he decided they
were not. And, very gradually, he began to realise that the
unconventional, always so attractive to the casual