to abridge your holiday, but we are very busy, and, at present,
short-handed.--Yours, etc.' There was a dry postscript to the effect
that another time I was to be good enough to leave more regular and
definite information as to my whereabouts when absent.

'I'm afraid I never got this!' I said, handing it to Davies.

'You won't go, will you?' said he, looking, nevertheless, with
unconcealed awe at the great man's handwriting under the haughty
official crest. Meanwhile I discovered an endorsement on a corner of
the envelope: 'Don't worry; it's only the chief's fuss.--M--' I
promptly tore up the envelope. There are domestic mysteries which it
would be indecent and disloyal to reveal, even to one's best friend.
The rest of my letters need no remark; I smiled over some and blushed
over others--all were voices from a life which was infinitely far
away. Davies, meanwhile, was deep in the foreign intelligence of a
newspaper, spelling it out line by line, and referring impatiently to
me for the meaning of words.

'Hullo!' he said, suddenly; 'same old game! Hear that siren?' A
curtain of fog had grown on the northern horizon and was drawing
shorewards slowly but surely.

'It doesn't matter, does it?' I said.

'Well, we must get back to the yacht. We can't leave her alone in the
fog.'

There was some marketing to be done on the way back, and in the
course of looking for the shops we wanted we came on the Schwannallée