"I suppose it is too unflattering a truth for you to believe." She
checked herself, looked up at him, hesitated. "It is _not_ absolutely
true. It was at first. I am normally interested now. If you knew more
about me you would very easily understand my lack of interest in people
I pass; the habit of not permitting myself to be interested--the
necessity of it. The art of indifference is far more easily acquired
than the art of forgetting."

"But surely," he said, "it can cost you no effort to forget me."

"No, of course not." She looked at him, unsmiling: "It was the acquired
habit of indifference in me which you mistook for--I think you mistook
it for stupidity. Many do. Did you?"

But the guilty amusement on his face answered her; she watched him
silently for a while.

"You are quite right in one way," she said; "an unconventional encounter
like this has no significance--not enough to dignify it with any effort
toward indifference. But until I began to reprove man in the abstract, I
really had not very much interest in you as an individual."

And, as he said nothing: "I might better have been in the beginning what
you call 'human'--found the situation mildly amusing--and it
_is_--though you don't know it! But"--she hesitated--"the acquired
instinct operated automatically. I wish I had been more--human; I can
be." She raised her eyes; and in them glimmered her first smile, faint,
yet so charming a revelation that the surprise of it held him
motionless at his oars.

"Have I paid the tribute you claim?" she asked. "If I have, may I not go
overboard at my convenience?"

He did not answer. She laid both arms along the gunwales once more,
balancing herself to rise.

"We are near enough now," she said, "and the fog is quite gone. May I
thank you and depart without further arousing you to psychological
philosophy?"

"If you must," he said; "but I'd rather row you in."

"If I must? Do you expect to paddle me around Cape Horn?" And she rose
and stepped lightly onto the bow, maintaining her balance without effort
while the boat pitched, fearless, confident, swaying there between sky
and sea.

"Good-bye," she said, gravely nodding at him.

"Good-bye, Calypso!"

She joined her finger tips above her head, preliminary to a plunge. Then
she looked down at him over her shoulder.

"I _told_ you that Calypso was a _land_ nymph."

"I can't help it; fabled Calypso you must remain to me."

"Oh; am I to remain--anythin