What is there humourous in any situation if you don't make it so?"
"I am not a humourist," she said.
She sat in the bows, one closed hand propping her chin; and sometimes her clear eyes, harboring lightning, wandered toward him, sometimes toward the shore.
"Suppose you continue to row," she said at last. "I'm doing you the honour of thinking about what you've said."
He resumed the oars, still sitting facing her, and pushed the boat slowly forward; and, as they continued their progress in silence, her brooding glance wavered, at intervals, between him and the coast.
"Haven't you any normal human curiosity concerning me?" he asked so boyishly that, for a second, again from her eyes, two gay little demons seemed to peer out and laugh at him.
But her lips were expressionless, and she only said: "I have no curiosity. Is that criminally abnormal?"
"Yes; if it is true. Is it?"
"I suppose it is too unflattering a truth for you to believe." She checked herself, looked up at him, hesitated. "It is not absolutely true. It was at first. I am normally interested now. If you knew more about me you would very easily understand my lack of interest in people I pass; the habit of not permitting myself to be interested—the necessity of it. The art of indifference is far more easily acquired than the art of forgetting."
"But surely," he said, "it can cost you no effort to forget me."
"No, of course not." She looked at him, unsmiling: "It was the acquired habit of indifference in me which you mistook for—I think you mistook it for stupidity. Many do. Did you?"
But the guilty amusement on his face answered her; she watched him silently for a while.
"You are quite right in one way," she said; "an unconventional encounter like this has no significance—not enough to dignify it with any effort toward indifference. But until I began to reprove man in the abstract, I really had not very much interest in you as an individual."
And, as he said nothing: "I might better have been in the beginning what you call 'human'—found the situation mildly amusing—and it is—though you don't know it! But"—she hesitated—"the acquired instinct operated automatically. I wish I had been more—human; I can be." She raised her eyes; and in them glimmered her first smile, faint, yet so charming a revelation that the surprise of it held him motionless at his oars.
"Have I paid the tribute you claim?" she asked. "If I have, may I not go overboard at my convenience?"
He did not answer. She laid both arms along the gunwales once more, balancing herself to rise.
"We are near enough now," she said, "and the fog is quite gone. May I thank you and depart without further arousing you to psychological philosophy?"
"If you must," he said; "but I'd rather row you in."
"If I must? Do you expect to paddle me around Cape Horn?" And she rose and stepped lightly onto the bow, maintaining her balance without effort while the boat pitched, fearless, confident, swaying there between sky and sea.
"Good-bye," she said, gravely nodding at him.
"Good-bye, Calypso!"
She joined her finger tips above her head, preliminary to a plunge. Then she looked down at him over her shoulder.
"I told you that Calypso was a land nymph."
"I can't help it; fabled Calypso you must remain to me."
"Oh; am I to remain—anything—to you—for the next five minutes?"
"Do you think I could forget you?"
"I don't think so—for five minutes. Your satisfied vanity will retain me for so long—until it becomes hungry again. And—but read the history of Ulysses—carefully. However, it was nice of you—not to name yourself and expect a response from me. I'm afraid—I'm afraid it is going to take me almost five minutes to forget you—I mean your boat of course. Good-bye!"
Before he could speak again she went overboard, rose swimming with effortless grace. After a dozen strokes or so she turned on one side, glancing back at him. Later, almost among the breakers, she raised one arm in airy signal, but whether to him or to somebody on the raft he did not know.
For five minutes—the allotted five—he lay on his oars watching the sands. At moments he fancied he could still distinguish her, but the distance was great, and there were many scarlet head-dresses among the bathers ashore and afloat.
And after a while he settled back on his oars, cast a last glance astern, and pulled for the Ariani, aboard of which Portlaw was already bellowing at him through an enormous megaphone.
Malcourt, who looked much younger than he really was, appeared on the after deck, strolling about with a telescope tucked up under one arm, both hands in his trousers pockets; and, as Hamil pulled under the stern, he leaned over the rail: "Hello, Hamil! Any trade with the natives in prospect? How far will a pint of beads go with the lady aborigines?"
"Better ask at the Beach Club," replied Hamil, laughing; "I say, Malcourt, I've had a corking swim out yonder—"
"Go in deep?" inquired Malcourt guilelessly.
"Deep? It's forty fathoms off the reef."
"I didn't mean the water," murmured Malcourt.
CHAPTER II
A LANDING
The Ariani was to sail that evening, her destination being Miami and the West Coast where Portlaw desired to do some tarpon fishing and Wayward had railroad interests. Malcourt, always in a receptive attitude, was quite ready to go anywhere when invited. Otherwise he preferred a remunerative attention to business.
Hamil, however, though with the gay company aboard, was not of them; he had business at Palm Beach; his luggage had already been sent ashore; and now, prepared to follow, he stood a little apart from the others on the moonlit deck, making his adieux to the master of the Ariani.
"It's been perfectly stunning—this cruise," he said. "It was kind of you, Wayward; I don't know how to tell you how kind—but your boat's a corker and you are another—"
"Do you like this sort of thing?" asked Wayward grimly.
"Like it? It's only a part of your ordinary lives—yours and Portlaw's; so you are not quite fitted to understand. But, Wayward, I've been in heavy harness. You have been doing this sort of heavenly thing—how many years?"
"Too many. Tell me; you've really made good this last year, haven't you, Garry?"
Hamil nodded. "I had to."
