y then.

Roger took her hand and led her into the room.

"This is Margarita," he said simply, but his face told all he did not
say, and I thanked heaven that neither Elder nor I had been foolish
enough to attempt what we should probably have called reasoning with
him.

"Is this the man that will marry us?" she inquired gravely, taking his
offered hand with a lovely, free gesture.

"Roger is going to give me the pleasure of making him so happy, yes,"
said Tip, very cordially, I thought, and with more grace than I had
believed him capable of. But she did not even smile at him, and it was
rather startling, because she had smiled at me, and I hadn't known her
long enough to understand that she had absolutely none of the
perfunctory motions of lips and eyes that we learn so soon and so
unconsciously in this cynical old world. When Margarita didn't feel
moved to smile, she didn't, that was all, just as she didn't pretend
to look grave at the death of the only woman she had ever known in her
life. She had never learned the game, you see.

"I should like it better if you did it," she said to me, and an
idiotic joy filled every crease of my heart.

"He can't do it, dear," Roger said gently, "only Mr. Elder can," and
the look of appeal he turned on Tip would have touched a harder heart
than that dear fellow's.

"You see, old man," he murmured apologetically, "she says just exactly
what she thinks, with no frills--she doesn't understand yet...."

And good old Tip smiled back at him and said he understood, if
Margarita didn't, and perhaps she would be willing to make his
acquaintance a little and walk out on the beach with him?

"I want to be your friend, too, Miss Margarita, as well as Roger's,"
he ended.

"I will walk with you if Jerry comes too," she said placidly, and so
we all laughed--I somewhat unsteadily--and Tip and I took her for a
walk.

And right here I must stop and mention a very interesting thing.
Though she saw him often after that, for the intimacy renewed there
after so many years never has waned since, and he has woven himself
strangely and wholesomely into all our lives, Margarita never cared
for Tip. For a long time I did not see why, and always attributed his
extraordinary invulnerability to her charm to her lack of interest in
him, but suddenly one day it came to me (in my bath, I remember; I
squeezed a lot of soap into my eye till I thought I should go blind)
and I realised all at once what a