a beauty!"

A deep flush stained Anthony's face, and I knew at once that he did not
like it. It was as if, having attuned his taste to the refinement of a
Japanese print, he had been called upon to admire a Fra Angelico. He
hated the obvious, and Nancy's loveliness at this moment was as definite
as the loveliness of the sky, the sea, the moon, the stars. Later I was
to learn that Anthony's taste was for a sophisticated Nancy, a mocking
Nancy, a slim, mysterious creature, with charms which were caviar to the
mob.

But Bob Needham spoke from the depths of his honest and undiscriminating
soul. "Heavens! Nancy. Where did you get it?"

"Get what?"

"That cloak."

"Do you like it?"

"Like it--! I wish Tony would run away while I tell you."

Anthony, forcing a smile, asked, "Where did you get it, Nan?"

"It was given to me." She sat down on the sand and smiled at him.

Mrs. Drake, feeling the thickness and softness, exclaiming over the
embroidery, said finally: "It is a splendid thing. Like a queen's robe."

"You haven't told us yet," Anthony persisted, "where you got it."

"No? Well, Elizabeth will tell you. It's rather a long story. I am going
into the water. Come on, Bob."

She left the cloak with me. Anthony followed her and the others. I sat
alone under a great orange umbrella and wondered if Anthony would ask me
about the cloak.

He did not, and when Nancy came back finally with her hair down and
blowing in the wind to dry, Anthony was with her. The cloud was gone
from his face, in the battle with the wares he had forgotten his
vexation.

But he remembered when he saw the cloak. "Tell me about it, Nancy."

"I got it from Elizabeth's viking."

That was the calm way in which she put it.

"He isn't my viking," I told her.

"Well, you were responsible for him."

"Do you mean to say," Anthony demanded, "that you accepted a gift like
that from a man you didn't know?"

Nancy, hugging herself in the cloak, said, "I felt that I knew him very
well."

"How long was he here?"

"Three days. I saw him twice."

"I don't think I quite like the--idea--" Anthony began, then broke off.
"Of course you have a right to do as you please."

"Of course," said Nancy, with a flame in her cheek.

"But it would please me very much if you would send it back to him."

"If I wanted to," she told him, "I couldn't."

"Why not?"

"Can you mail parcel post packages to the--Flying Dutchman? Or express
things to--to Odi