will be young when you
and I are blinking in our dull old age! He's the biggest man I ever met!
And I want to know him, I want to know how he thinks and feels, I want
that more than anything else! And now you come between us!"

"Are you real?" asked Eleanore. I looked back unflinchingly.

"Just you try me," I retorted.

"No," she replied with a quiet smile.

She said good-by to me that night.

* * * * *

The next morning at seven o'clock I met her father down at the boat. We
had a quick swim together and then climbed on board. And the next
minute, with a sober old seaman called "Captain Arty" at the wheel, the
boat was speeding for New York while we dressed and cooked and
breakfasted.

"This was Eleanore's idea," Dillon said. "It gets me to town by nine
o'clock and takes me back each day at five. So I hardly miss a night at
home.... Did she ever tell you," he went on, "about the first week she
spent in this boat?"

"She said it was a wonderful time."

"It was a nightmare," Dillon said. I looked at him quickly:

"What do you mean?"

"Her fight for her strength. She looked like a ghost--with a stiff upper
lip. She fainted twice. But she wouldn't give up. She said she knew she
could do it if I'd only let her stick it out. She has quite a will, that
daughter of mine," he added quietly.

"You know," he went on, "that idea of hers that you tackle the North
River piers isn't bad. Why don't you put in the whole Summer there,
watching the big liners? I won't ask you to come to my office now, for
our work is still in that early stage where we don't want any
publicity." I could feel his casual glance, and I wondered whether he
noticed my sharp disappointment. "When we are ready," he resumed, "we're
sure to be flooded with writers. I hope there'll be one man in the lot
who'll stick to the work for a year or more, a man with a kind of a
passion in him for the thing we're trying to do. There's nothing we
wouldn't do for that man. I hope he's going to be you."

At once a vision opened of work with Eleanore's father, of long talks
with Eleanore.

"I'll try to get ready for it," I said.

"You've made a fine start," he continued, "and I think you're going to
make good. But first let's see what you'll do by yourself. Get your own
view of this place as it is to-day before we talk about plans for
to-morrow. And don't hurry. Take your time."

As he said this quietly, I suddenly awoke to th