“The villain?”

He was moved suddenly out of his dream, for the object of it stood smiling at his side.  A wisp of hair was blowing across her eyes and she was endeavoring to adjust it under her cap.

“The villain?” making a fine effort to remarshal his thoughts.

“Yes.  We were talking about him last night.  Where did you leave him?”

“He was still pursuing, I believe.”

“Why don’t you make him a real villain, a man who never kills any one, but who makes every one unhappy?”

“But that’s a problem-villain; what we must have is a romance-villain, the kind every one is sorry for.  Look at that old Portuguese man-o’-war,” pointing to the crest of a near-by wave.  “Funny little codger!”

“When do you expect to begin the story on paper?”

“When I have all the material,” not afraid of her eyes at that moment.

She propped her elbows on the rail.  It was a seductive pose, and came very near being the young man’s undoing.

“Does it seem impossible to you,” she said, “that in these prosaic times we are treasure hunting?  Must we not wake up and find it a dream?”

“Most dreams are perishable, but in this case we have the dream tightly bound.  But what are we going to do with all this money when we find it?”

“Divide it or start a soldiers’ home.  I’ve never thought of it as money.”

“Heaven knows, I have!”

“Why?”

“Do you really wish to know?” in a voice new to her ear.  “Do you wish to know why I want money, lots and lots of it?”

She dropped her arms and turned.  The tone agitated and alarmed her strangely.  “Why, yes.  With plenty of money you could devote all your time to writing; and I am sure you could write splendid stories.”

“That was not my exact thought,” he replied, resolutely pulling himself together.  “But it will serve.”  By George! he thought, that was close enough.

She did not ask him what his exact thought was, but she suspected it.  There was a little shock of pleasure and disappointment; the one rising from the fact that he had stopped where he did and the other that he had not gone on.  And she grew angry over this second expression.  She liked him; she had never met a young man whom she liked more.  But liking is never loving, and her heart was as free and unburdened as the wind.  As once remarked, many of the men with whom she had come into contact had been bred in idleness, and her interest in them had never gone above friendly tolerance.  Her admiration was for men, young or old, who cut their way roughly through the world’s great obstacles, who achieved things in pioneering, in history, in science; and she admired them because they were rather difficult to draw out, being more familiar with startling journeys, wildernesses, strange peoples, than with the gilded metaphors of the drawing-room.