chair, the darky pedalled off; then the young
man returned to the terrace where presently a table for two was brought
and luncheon announced as Shiela Cardross appeared.

Hamil displayed the healthy and undiscriminating appetite of a man who
is too busy mentally and physically to notice what he eats and drinks;
Shiela touched nothing except fruit. She lighted his cigarette for him
before the coffee, and took one herself, turning it thoughtfully over
and over between her delicately shaped fingers; but at a glance of
inquiry from him:

"No, I don't," she said; "it burns my tongue. Besides I may some day
require it as a novelty to distract me--so I'll wait."

She rose a moment later, and stood, distrait, looking out across the
sunlit world. He at her elbow, head bent, idly watched the smoke curling
upward from his cigarette.

Presently, as though moved by a common impulse, they turned together,
slowly traversed the terrace and the long pergola all crimson and white
with bougainvillia and jasmine, and entered the jungle road beyond the
courts where carved seats of coquina glimmered at intervals along the
avenue of oaks and palmettos and where stone-edged pools reflected the
golden green dusk of the semi-tropical foliage above.

On the edge of one of these basins the girl seated herself; without her
hat and gloves and in a gown which exposed throat and neck she always
looked younger and more slender to him, the delicate modelling of the
neck and its whiteness was accentuated by the silky growth of the brown
hair which close to the nape and brow was softly blond like a child's.

The frail, amber-tinted little dragon-flies of the South came hovering
over the lotus bloom that edged the basin; long, narrow-shaped
butterflies whose velvet-black wings were barred with brilliant stripes
of canary yellow fluttered across the forest aisle; now and then a giant
papilio sailed high under the arched foliage on tiger-striped wings of
chrome and black, or a superb butterfly in pearl white and malachite
green came flitting about the sparkle-berry bloom.

The girl nodded toward it. "That is a scarce butterfly here," she said.
"Gray would be excited. I wish we had his net here."

"It is the _Victorina_, isn't it?" he asked, watching the handsome,
nervous-winged creature which did not seem inclined to settle on the
white flowers.

"Yes, the _Victorina steneles_. Are you interested?"

"The generation I grew up with collected," he s