“I know it; so in revenge I’m going to spoil yours.  Our trip is called ‘Seeing Florida,’ so you must listen to your guide very attentively.  This is a pomelo grove—­thank you,” to the negro who opened the gate—­“here you see blossoms and ripe fruit together on the same tree.  A few palmettos have been planted here for various agricultural reasons.  This is a camphor bush”—­touching it with her bat—­“the leaves when crushed in the palm exhale a delightful fragr—­”

“Calypso!”

She turned toward him with coldest composure. “That never happened, Mr. Hamil.”

“No,” he said, “it never did.”

A slight colour remained in his face; hers was cool enough.

“Did you think it happened?” she asked.  He shook his head.  “No,” he repeated seriously, “I know that it never happened.”

She said:  “If you are quite sure it never happened, there is no harm in pretending it did....  What was it you called me?”

“I could never remember, Miss Cardross—­unless you tell me.”

“Then I’ll tell you—­if you are quite sure you don’t remember.  You called me ‘Calypso.’”

And looking up he surprised the rare laughter in her eyes.

“You are rather nice after all,” she said, “or is it only that I have you under such rigid discipline?  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?”