Her dark hair was covered by
a broad-brimmed black hat. She was leaning back in her chair as she read,
the book lying on her lap. Suddenly the gravity of her face relaxed. A
smile rippled across it like a little breeze across the surface of some
lake. The smile broke into silent laughter. Antony found himself smiling
in response.

She looked up from her book, and out over the sun-kissed water, the
amusement still trembling on her lips and dancing in her eyes.

"I wonder," reflected Antony watching her, "what she has been reading."

For some ten minutes she sat gazing at the sunshine. Then she rose from
her chair, placed her book upon it, and went towards the stairway which
led to the lower deck.

Antony looked at the empty chair--empty, that is, except for a pale blue
cushion and a deeper blue book. On the back of the chair, certain letters
were painted,--P. di D.

Antony surveyed them gravely. The first letter really engrossed his
attention. The last was merely an adjunct. The first would represent--or
should represent--the real woman. He marshalled every possibility before
him, merely to dismiss them: Patience, Phyllis, Prudence, Priscilla,
Perpetua, Penelope, Persis, Phoebe, Pauline,--none were to his mind. The
last appeared to him the most possible, and yet it did not truly belong.
So he summed up its fitness. Yet, for the life of him, he could find no
other. He had run through the whole gamut attached to the initial, so he
told himself. Curiosity, or interest, call it what you will, fell back
baffled.

He got up from his chair, and began to pace the deck. Passing her chair,
he gazed again upon the letters painted thereon, as if challenging them
to disclose the secret. Inscrutable, they stared back blankly at him.

Turning for the third time, he perceived that she had returned on deck.
She was carrying a small bag of old gold brocade. She was in the chair
once more as he came alongside of her; but the blue book had slipped to
the ground. He bent to pick it up, involuntarily glancing at the title as
he handed it to her. _Dream Days_. It fitted into his imaginings of her.

"Do you know it?" she queried, noticing his glance.

"No," replied Antony, turning the book in his hands.

"Oh, but you should," she smiled back at him. "That is if you have the
smallest memory of your own childhood. I was just laughing over 'death
letters' ten minutes ago."

"Death letters?" queried Antony perplexed, the while his hear