d tennis.
He hired a launch and in her honor gave a picnic on the north coast of
the island, and on three glorious and memorable nights, after different
dinner-parties had ascended to the roof, he sat at her side and across
the white level of the housetops looked down into the moonlit harbor.

What interest the two young people felt in each other was in no way
discouraged by their surroundings. In the tropics the tender emotions
are not winter killed. Had they met at home, the conventions, his own
work, her social duties would have kept the progress of their interest
within a certain speed limit. But they were in a place free of
conventions, and the preceding eight months which Hemingway had spent
in the jungle and on the plain had made the society of his fellow man,
and of Mrs. Adair in particular, especially attractive.

Hemingway had no work to occupy his time, and he placed it unreservedly
at the disposition of his countrywoman. In doing so it could not be
said that Mrs. Adair encouraged him. Hemingway himself would have been
the first to acknowledge this. From the day he met her he was
conscious that always there was an intangible barrier between them.
Even before she possibly could have guessed that his interest in her
was more than even she, attractive as she was, had the right to expect,
she had wrapped around herself an invisible mantle of defense.

There were certain speeches of his which she never heard, certain tones
to which she never responded. At moments when he was complimenting
himself that at last she was content to be in his company, she would
suddenly rise and join the others, and he would be left wondering in
what way he could possibly have offended.

He assured himself that a woman, young and attractive, in a strange
land in her dependent position must of necessity be discreet, but in
his conduct there certainly had been nothing that was not considerate,
courteous, and straightforward.

When he appreciated that he cared for her seriously, that he was
gloriously happy in caring, and proud of the way in which he cared, the
fact that she persistently held him at arm's length puzzled and hurt.
At first when he had deliberately set to work to make her like him he
was glad to think that, owing to his reticence about himself, if she
did like him it would be for himself alone and not for his worldly
goods. But when he knew her better he understood that if once Mrs.
Adair made up her mind to ta