disturbing flood. I
forgot Roger, I forgot what had been myself; in that instant, in the
utter surrender of her innocent eyes, she became for me all at once
the vision I had seen in the mist again, the thing we mean when we say
woman--but now she was one single special woman, the vision and the
flesh-and-blood reality together.

"Are you sorry?" I said again, and my voice was not my own.

She smiled at me till I caught my breath. "Not now, Jerry," she said
softly, "because you do love me, now."

The sand fell, a tightly moulded shape, out of my hand, and I wrenched
my eyes away from her. They smarted and stung, but the pain relieved
me and cleared my brain, and I knew suddenly what I have known ever
since and shall know till I die. There on the beach, before I had so
much as touched her hand, I had fallen senselessly and hopelessly and
everlastingly in love with Margarita.

CHAPTER X

FATE SPREADS AN ISLAND FEAST

I don't know how long we sat silent on the beach. Such silence was
never embarrassing to her, because it seemed perfectly normal and
usual, and I was too busy with my thoughts to feel any sense of
restraint. And yet they were hardly thoughts: my head whirled in a
confusion of regret and desire, and one moment my blood ran warm with
the joy of my discovery, and the next a horrid chill crept over me as
I saw my empty years--for if she might not fill them, no one else
should. At last I drew a long breath.

"Are you hungry?" Margarita asked pleasantly. "When I am hungry I do
that very often. If you will come now, we will have our breakfast."

She sprang to her feet with the lithe ease of a boy and held out her
hand to me. I took it and we walked thus across the beach to the
cottage, and during that walk, with her firm, warm hand fast in mine
and her clean, elastic step beside me, I swore to myself that neither
she nor Roger should ever regret what she had done to me, nor know it,
if I could keep the knowledge from them. The last part of this vow was
impossible of fulfillment, finally, but the first, thank God! has
never been broken, or even for a moment strained, and I like to hope
that this may count a little to my credit, in the ultimate auditing,
for she was terribly alluring, this Margarita, and I am no more a
stock or a stone than other men, I fancy.

We walked around to the shore side of the cottage and there stood
Roger on its weather-beaten veranda, his hand held out to me eagerly,
an a