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 hid her, then she reappeared, a pale shape in the dusk of the oleander-bordered path.

He listened; the perfume of the oleanders enveloped him; high under the stars the fronds of a royal palm hung motionless.  Then, through the stillness, very far away, he heard the southern ocean murmuring in its slumber under a million stars.

CHAPTER IV