He heard himself gasp; and afterward, when he and a wave together had banged the door shut, he hoped that he had said:  “I beg your pardon.”  He was so confused, however, that he was not at all sure he had not blurted out “Good Lord!”

For a moment he stood as still as the sea would let him in front of the door, burning to open it again and see if the girls were really there.  But, of course, he could not do that.  He would have been almost inclined to believe they were wax figures if they had not moved, but they had moved.

They had been—­sprawling is not a word to use in connection with dryads—­yet certainly reclining, in easy chairs and on sofas, and had started up as the door opened to stare at him.  One had laughed.  Peter had shut the door on her laugh.  He had brought away a vague impression that chairs, sofas, and carpet were pale gray, and that the dryads’ dresses of wonderful tints, sparkling with gold and silver and jewels, had been brilliant as tropical flowers against the neutral background.  Also, when he came to think of it, he wasn’t sure that the walls were not mostly made of mirrors.  That was why he could not be certain whether he had seen five dryads or five times five.

“The dryad door,” he apostrophized it romantically, keeping his balance by standing with his feet apart, as old men stand before a fire.  It was a very ordinary-looking door, and that made the romance for Peter in giving it such a name—­just a white-painted door, so new that it smelled slightly of varnish—­yet behind it lay dreamland.

Of course Peter Rolls knew that the tall, incredibly lovely beings were not dryads and not dreams, although they wore low necks, and pearls and diamonds in their wonderful, waved hair, at eleven o’clock of a stormy morning on board an Atlantic liner.  Still, he was blessed if he could think what they were, and what they were doing in that room of mirrors without any furniture which he could recall, except a very large screen, a few chairs, and a sofa or two.

The next best thing to the forbidden one—­opening the door again to ask the beings point-blank whether they were pipe dreams or just mermaids—­was to go on to the gymnasium and inquire there.  Toward this end young Mr. Rolls (as he was respectfully called in a business house never mentioned by his sister) immediately took steps.  But taking steps was as far as he got.  Suddenly it seemed a deed you could not do, to demand of an imitation-camel’s attendant why five young ladies wore evening dress in the morning in a room three doors away.

After all, why should a camel attendant dare to know anything about them?  Perhaps they were merely amusing themselves and each other by trying on all their gladdest clothes.  There might be girls who would think this a good way to kill time in a storm.  Yes, conceivably there might be such girls, just as there might be sea serpents; but, though Peter Rolls was too shy to have learned much about the female of his species, the explanation did not appeal to his reason.