She looked up from her book, and out over the sun-kissed water, the amusement still trembling on her lips and dancing in her eyes.
“I wonder,” reflected Antony watching her, “what she has been reading.”
For some ten minutes she sat gazing at the sunshine. Then she rose from her chair, placed her book upon it, and went towards the stairway which led to the lower deck.
Antony looked at the empty chair—empty, that is, except for a pale blue cushion and a deeper blue book. On the back of the chair, certain letters were painted,—P. di D.
Antony surveyed them gravely. The first letter really engrossed his attention. The last was merely an adjunct. The first would represent—or should represent—the real woman. He marshalled every possibility before him, merely to dismiss them: Patience, Phyllis, Prudence, Priscilla, Perpetua, Penelope, Persis, Phœbe, Pauline,—none were to his mind. The last appeared to him the most possible, and yet it did not truly belong. So he summed up its fitness. Yet, for the life of him, he could find no other. He had run through the whole gamut attached to the initial, so he told himself. Curiosity, or interest, call it what you will, fell back baffled.
He got up from his chair, and began to pace the deck. Passing her chair, he gazed again upon the letters painted thereon, as if challenging them to disclose the secret. Inscrutable, they stared back blankly at him.
Turning for the third time, he perceived that she had returned on deck. She was carrying a small bag of old gold brocade. She was in the chair once more as he came alongside of her; but the blue book had slipped to the ground. He bent to pick it up, involuntarily glancing at the title as he handed it to her. Dream Days. It fitted into his imaginings of her.
“Do you know it?” she queried, noticing his glance.
“No,” replied Antony, turning the book in his hands.
“Oh, but you should,” she smiled back at him. “That is if you have the smallest memory of your own childhood. I was just laughing over ‘death letters’ ten minutes ago.”