The hollow chambers of Percival's heart reverberated with alarming
echoes. He shot a suspicious glance at Bobby, but her innocent gaze
reassured him.

"I am afraid your friend Miss Weston is romantic," he said stiffly. "Am
I keeping you too long from the dance?"

"Oh, no," said Bobby, comfortably. "I've got the next with Andy Black.
He'll never think to look up here. But are you quite sure I'm not
getting on your nerves?"

"I am quite sure you are a most awfully charming girl," Percival
exclaimed with sudden warmth. "As a matter of fact, I--I like you
tremendously."

"That's nice," said Bobby, "because, you see, I like you!"

There was no reason why her avowal should have been regarded as more
serious than his own. But he took alarm instantly.

"You won't mind my telling you a few things for your own good, will
you?" he asked, taking refuge in the safe role of mentor.

"Not a bit," said Bobby; "fire away."

She listened for five minutes to his dissertation on the impropriety of
young ladies playing poker in the smoking-room, then she became restive.

"Isn't it funny," she said by way of changing the subject, "that
yesterday was Friday, and to-morrow is going to be Saturday, and to-day
isn't anything?"

"But it _is_ something. It's a day I shall remember."

Percival was drifting again, and he knew it, but there was that in the
bewitching face upturned to his that demoralized him.

"No," said Bobby, "it's the day that never was. We just picked it up out
of the sea, and we are going to drop it back again. Whatever happens
to-day doesn't count."

"Why?"

"Because by to-morrow, you see, to-day never will have been."

"Deuced clever idea that, I call it. Never thought of it. Suppose we
celebrate by way of doing something that we wouldn't do if it counted."

Bobby clapped her hands. "What shall it be?"

"Well, suppose for the rest of the day you consider me the person you
quite like best in the world."

She considered it.

"All right. I don't mind for the rest of the day. And you promise to
forget all those girls over in England, and pretend that I am the nicest
girl you know?"

"I promise," said Percival.

When the second gong for dinner sounded, the two white-clad figures
were still leaning on the railing in the secluded angle made by two
life-boats. The color had gone from the sky, but every moment the
purpling waters were growing more vivid, more intense, more thrillingly
alive to the mystery of