a boat."

"I am glad of that," she remarked, "because I cannot swim, myself. And
I must be with Roger, you know, when we are being married."

"It is usual," I admitted. I was really only half aware of the
extraordinary character of our conversation. Every one became
primitive in talking with Margarita and fell, more or less, into her
style of discourse.

"Have you been married?" she asked placidly, her grave, lovely eyes
full on mine. She sat quite motionless, her hands loose in her lap,
neither twiddling them aimlessly nor pretending to employ them in the
hundred nervous ways common to her sex.

"No."

"Neither have I. Neither has Roger. But many people have. It cannot be
hard."

"Oh, no! I believe it is the simplest thing in the world," I said,
eyeing her narrowly. Was she teasing me? I wondered.

"So Roger says," she agreed with obvious relief. "It is only talking.
I cannot see why Roger could not learn to do it himself. Can you not
do it, either?"

I shook my head. I was trying to believe that she was not quite sane,
but it was impossible. Her mind, I could have sworn, was as vigorous
as my own, though there was a difference, evidently. The precise,
beautiful articulation of her English gave me a new direction. She
must be a foreigner--Italian, for choice, in spite of her English
eyes.

"Marrying people is a business like any other, Miss--I did not hear
your last name?" I ventured.

"I have none," she said. "I mean," correcting herself, "Roger says
that I must have one, of course, but I do not happen to have heard
it," she added calmly.

"Ah, well," I said coldly, "it is a mere detail."

I was seriously vexed with Roger. This young woman passed belief. I
decided that she was an actress of the first water and resented being
imposed upon.

"It is the same with my age--how old I am," she continued. "Roger
thinks I am twenty years of age. Do you? He is going to ask you."

"Really, I can't say," I returned shortly, "I am a poor judge of
women's ages--or characters," I added pointedly.

She did not blush nor move. Only her eyes widened slightly and
darkened.

"Roger will ask you," she repeated and I felt, unreasonably, as it
seemed to me then, that my tone had hurt her, as one's tone, utterly
incomprehensible as the words it utters may be, will hurt a child.

She sat in silence for a moment, and I, curiously eager for her next
remark and conscious suddenly of that strange, muffled excitement that