compelled?"

"I--it seems so----"

"O-h!" Flushed, excited, laughing, she clasped her hands under her chin
and gazed at him.

"To think," she said softly, "that you believed me to be a real siren,
and that my beauty and my singing actually did lure you to my rock! Isn't
it exciting?"

He looked at her, then turned red:

"Yes, it is," he said.

Hands still clasped together tightly beneath her rounded chin, she
surveyed him with intense interest. He was at a disadvantage; the sleek,
half-drowned appearance which a man has who emerges from a swim does not
exhibit him at his best.

But he had a deeper interest for Flavilla; her melody and loveliness had
actually lured him across the water to the peril of her rocks; this human
being, this man creature, seemed to be, in a sense, hers.

"Please fix your hair," she said, handing him her comb and mirror.

"My hair?"

"Certainly. I want to look at you."

He thought her request rather extraordinary, but he sat up and with the
aid of the mirror, scraped away at his wet hair, parting it in the middle
and combing it deftly into two gay little Mercury wings. Then, fishing in
the soaked pockets of his knickerbockers, he produced a pair of smart
pince-nez, which he put on, and then gazed up at her.

"Oh!" she said, with a quick, indrawn breath, "you _are_ attractive!"

At that he turned becomingly scarlet.

Leaning on one lovely, bare arm, burnished hair clustering against her
cheeks, she continued to survey him in delighted approval which sometimes
made him squirm inwardly, sometimes almost intoxicated him.

"To think," she murmured, "that _I_ lured _you_ out here!"

"I _am_ thinking about it," he said.

She laid her head on one side, inspecting him with frankest approval.

"I wonder," she said, "what your name is. I am Flavilla Carr."

"Not one of the Carr triplets!"

"Yes--but," she added quickly, "I'm not married. Are you?"

"Oh, no, no, no!" he said hastily. "I'm Henry Kingsbury, of Pebble Point,
Northport----"

"Master and owner of the beautiful but uncertain _Sappho?_ Oh, tell me,
_are_ you the man who has tipped over so many times in Long Island Sound?
Because I--I adore a man who has the pluck to continue to capsize every
day or two."

"Then," he said, "you can safely adore me, for I am that yachtsman who
has fallen off the _Sappho_ more times than the White Knight fell off his
horse."

"I--I _do_ adore you!" she exclaimed impulsively.

"Of cour