“Cecile,” observed her mother mildly.

“But I wish to hug him, mother, and he doesn’t mind.”

Her mother laughed; Hamil, a trifle red, received a straightforward salute square on the mouth.

“That,” she said with calm conviction, “is the most proper and fitting thing you and I have ever done.  Mother, you know it is.”  And passing her arm through Hamil’s: 

“Last night,” she said under her breath, “I went into Shiela’s room to say good-night, and—­and we both began to cry a little.  It was as though I were giving up my controlling ownership in a dear and familiar possession; we did not speak of you—­I don’t remember that we spoke at all from the time I entered her room to the time I left—­which was fearfully late.  But I knew that I was giving up some vague proprietary right in her—­that, to-day, that right would pass to another....  And, if I kissed you, Garry, it was in recognition of the passing of that right to you—­and happy acquiescence in it, dear—­believe me! happy, confident renunciation and gratitude for what must be.”

They had walked together to the southern end of the terrace; below stretched the splendid forest vista set with pool and fountain; under the parapet, in the new garden, red and white roses bloomed, and on the surface of spray-dimmed basins the jagged crimson reflections of goldfish dappled every unquiet pool.

“Where is the new polo field?” he asked.

She pointed out an unfamiliar path curving west from the tennis-courts, nodded, smiled, returning the pressure of his hand, and stood watching him from the parapet until he vanished in the shadow of the trees.

The path was a new one to him, cut during the summer.  For a quarter of a mile it wound through the virgin hammock, suddenly emerging into a sunny clearing where an old orange grove grown up with tangles of brier and vine had partly given place to the advance of the jungle.

Something glimmered over there among the trees—­a girl, coated and skirted in snowy white, sitting a pony, and leisurely picking and eating the great black mulberries that weighted the branches so that they bent almost to the breaking.

She saw him from a distance, turned in her saddle, lifting her polo-mallet in recognition; and as he came, pushing his way across the clearing, almost shoulder-deep through weeds, from which the silver-spotted butterflies rose in clouds, she stripped off one stained glove, and held out her hand to him.

“You were so long in coming,” she managed to say, calmly, “I thought I’d ride part way back to meet you; and fell a victim to these mulberries.  Tempted and fell, you see....  Are you well?  It is nice to see you.”

And as he still retained her slim white hand in both of his: 

“What do you think of my new pony?” she asked, forcing a smile.  “He’s teaching me the real game....  I left the others when Gray came up; Cuyp, Phil Gatewood, and some other men are practising.  You’ll play to-morrow, won’t you?  It’s such a splendid game.”  She was talking at random, now, as though the sound of her own voice were sustaining her with its nervous informality; and she chattered on in feverish animation, bridging every threatened silence with gay inconsequences.