scipline? But it was very bad taste in you to
recall so crudely what never occurred--until I gave you the liberty to
do it. Don't you think so?"

"Yes, I do," he said. "I've made two exhibitions of myself since I knew
you--"

"_One_, Mr. Hamil. Please recollect that I am scarcely supposed to know
how many exhibitions of yourself you may have made before we were
formally presented."

She stood still under a tree which drooped like a leaf-tufted umbrella,
and she said, swinging her racket: "You will always have me at a
disadvantage. Do you know it?"

"That is utterly impossible!"

"Is it? Do you mean it?"

"I do with all my heart--"

"Thank you; but do you mean it with all your logical intelligence, too?"

"Yes, of course I do."

She stood, head partly averted, one hand caressing the smooth,
pale-yellow fruit which hung in heavy clusters around her. And all
around her, too, the delicate white blossoms poured out fragrance, and
the giant swallow-tail butterflies in gold and black fluttered and
floated among the blossoms or clung to them as though stupefied by their
heavy sweetness.

"I wish we had begun--differently," she mused.

"I don't wish it."

She said, turning on him almost fiercely: "You persisted in talking to
me in the boat; you contrived to make yourself interesting without being
offensive--I don't know how you managed it! And then--last night--I was
not myself.... And then--_that_ happened!"

"Could anything more innocent have happened?"

"Something far more dignified could have happened when I heard you say
'Calypso.'" She shrugged her shoulders. "It's done; we've misbehaved;
and you will have to be dreadfully careful. You will, won't you? And yet
I shall certainly hate you heartily if you make any difference between
me and other women. Oh, dear!--Oh, dear! The whole situation is just
unimportant enough to be irritating. Mr. Hamil, I don't think I care for
you very much."

And as he looked at her with a troubled smile, she added:

"You must not take that declaration _too_ literally. Can you
forget--various things?"

"I don't want to, Miss Cardross. Listen: nobody could be more sweet,
more simple, more natural than the girl I spoke to--I dreamed that I
talked with--last night. I don't want to forget that night, or that
girl. Must I?"

"Are you, in your inmost thoughts, fastidious in thinking of that girl?
Is there any reservation, any hesitation?"

He said, meeting her eyes: "She is e