To her surprise he was instantly highly annoyed and resentful.

“For Heaven’s sake, Tony, don’t get the resemblance mania.  It’s a disgusting habit.  I knew a woman once who was always chasing likenesses in people and prattling about them—­got her in trouble once and served her right.  She told a young lieutenant that he looked extraordinarily like a certain famous general of her acquaintance.  It proved later that the young man had been born at the post where the general was stationed while the presumptive father was absent on a year’s cruise.  It had been quite a prominent scandal at the time.”

“That isn’t a nice story, Alan.  Moreover it is entirely irrelevant.  But you and Dick do look alike.  I am not the only or the first person who saw it, either.”

Alan started and frowned.

“Good Lord!  Who else?” he demanded.

“Carlotta!”

“The devil she did!” Alan’s eyes were vindictive.  Then he laughed.  “Commend me to a girl’s imagination!  This Dick chap seems to be head over heels in love with you,” he added.

“What nonsense!” denied Tony crisply, fashioning a miniature sand mountain as she spoke.

“No nonsense at all, my dear.  Perfectly obvious fact.  Don’t you suppose I know how a man looks when he is in love?  I ought to.  I’ve been in love often enough.”

Tony demolished her mountain with a wrathful sweep of her hand.

“And registered all the appropriate emotions before the mirror, I suppose.  You make me sick, Alan.  You are all pose.  I don’t believe there is a single sincere thing about you.”

“Oh, yes, there is—­are—­two.”

“What are they?”

“One is my sincere devotion to yourself, my beautiful.  The other—­an equally sincere devotion to—­myself.”

“I grant you the second, at least.”

“Don’t pose, yourself, my darling.  You know I love you.  You pretend you don’t believe it, but you do.  And way down deep in your heart you love my love.  It makes your heart beat fast just to think of it.  See!  Did I not tell you?” He had suddenly put out his hand and laid it over her heart.

“Poor little wild bird!  How its wings flutter!”

Tony got up swiftly from the sand, her face scarlet.  She was indignant, self-conscious, betrayed.  For her heart had been beating at a fearful clip and she knew it.

“How dare you touch me like that, Alan Massey?  I detest you.  I don’t see why I ever listen to you at all, or let you come near me.”

Alan Massey, still lounging at her feet, looked up at her as she stood above him, slim, supple, softly rounded, adorably pretty and feminine in her black satin bathing suit and vivid, emerald hued cap.

“I know why,” he said and rose, too, slowly, with the indolent grace of a leopard.  “So do you, my Tony,” he added.  “We both know.  Will you dance with me a great deal to-night?”

“No.”