in letting go of that live
wire which keeps us all keyed to one conventional monotone in the North.
I let go--for a moment--to-night. _You_ let go when you said 'Calypso.'
You couldn't have said it in New York; I couldn't have heard you,
there.... Alas, Ulysses, I should not have heard you anywhere. But I
did; and I answered.... Say good night to me, now; won't you? We have
not been very wicked, I think."

She offered her hand; smooth and cool it lay for a second in his.

"I can't let you return alone," he ventured.

"If you please, how am I to explain you to--the others?"

And as he said nothing:

"If I were--different--I'd simply tell them the truth. I could afford
to. Besides we'll all know you before very long. Then we'll see--oh,
yes, both of us--whether we have been foolishly wise to become
companions in our indiscretion, or--otherwise.... And don't worry about
my home-arrival. That's my lawn--there where that enormous rubber-banyan
tree straddles across the stars.... Is it not quaint--the tangle of
shrubbery all over jasmine?--and those are royal poincianas, if you
please--and there's a great garden beyond and most delectable orange
groves where you and I and the family and Alonzo will wander and eat
pine-oranges and king-oranges and mandarins and--oh, well! Are you going
to call on Mr. Cardross to-morrow?"

"Yes," he said, "I'll have to see Mr. Cardross at once. And after that,
what am I to do to meet you?"

"I will consider the matter," she said; and bending slightly toward him:
"Am I to be disappointed in you? I don't know, and you can't tell me."
Then, impulsively: "Be generous to me. You are right; I am not very old,
yet. Be nice to me in your thoughts. I have never before done such a
thing as this: I never could again. It is not very dreadful--is it? Will
you think nicely of me?"

He said gaily: "Now you speak as you look, not like a world-worn woman
of thirty wearing the soft, fresh mask of nineteen."

"You have not answered me," she said quietly.

"Answered you, Calypso?"

"Yes; I ask you to be very gentle and fastidious with me in your
thoughts; not even to call me Calypso--in your thoughts."

"What you ask I had given you the first moment we met."

"Then you _may_ call me Calypso--in your thoughts."

"Calypso," he pleaded, "won't you tell me where to find you?"

"Yes; in the house of--Mr. Cardross. This is his house."

She turned and stepped onto the lawn. A mass of scarlet hibiscus