"Yes, you are!--pretending that I was disappointed in you because you
hadn't dawdled around Europe for years in the wake of an education. You
are, apparently, just about the average sort of man one meets--yet I
kicked over several conventions for the sake of exchanging a few
premature words with you, knowing all the while I was to meet you later.
It certainly was not for your beaux yeux; I am not sentimental!" she
added fiercely. "And it was not because you are a celebrity--you are not
one yet, you know. Something in you certainly appealed to something
reckless in me; yet I did not really feel very sinful when I let you
speak to me; and, even in the boat, I admit frankly that I enjoyed every
word that we spoke--though I didn't appear to, did I?"

"No, you didn't," he said.

She smiled, watching him, chin on hand.

"I wonder how you'll like this place," she mused. "It's gay--in a way.
There are things to do every moment if you let people rob you of your
time--dances, carnivals, races, gambling, suppers. There's the
Fortnightly Club, and various charities too, and dinners and teas and
all sorts of things to do outdoors on land and on water. Are you fond of
shooting?"

"Very. I _can_ do that pretty well."

"So can I. We'll go with my father and Gray. Gray is my brother; you'll
meet him at luncheon. What time is it?"

He looked at his watch. "Eleven--a little after."

"We're missing the bathing. Everybody splashes about the pool or the
ocean at this hour. Then everybody sits on the veranda of _The Breakers_
and drinks things and gossips until luncheon. Rather intellectual, isn't
it?"

"Sufficiently," he replied lazily.

She leaned over the parapet, standing on the tips of her white shoes and
looked down at the school of fish. Presently she pointed to a snake
swimming against the current.

"A moccasin?" he asked.

"No, only a water snake. They call everything moccasins down here, but
real moccasins are not very common."

"And rattlesnakes?"

"Scarcer still. You hear stories, but--" She shrugged her shoulders. "Of
course when we are quail shooting it's well to look where you step, but
there are more snakes in the latitude of Saint Augustine than there are
here. When father and I are shooting we never think anything about them.
I'm more afraid of those horrid wood-ticks. Listen; shall we go
camping?"

"But I have work on hand," he said dejectedly.

"That is part of your work. Father said so. Anyway I know h