Men, on first acquaintance, were usually very easily captivated, for she had not only all the general attraction of being young, feminine, and unusually ornamental, but she also possessed numberless individualities like a rapid fire of incarnations, which since she was sixteen had kept many a young man, good and true, madly guessing which was the real Cecile.  And yet all the various and assorted Ceciles seemed equally desirable, susceptible, and eternally on the verge of being rounded up and captured; that was the worst of it; and no young man she had ever known had wholly relinquished hope.  For even in the graceful act of side-stepping the smitten, the girl’s eyes and lips seemed unconsciously to unite in a gay little unspoken promise—­“This serial story is to be continued in our next—­perhaps.”

As for the other people at the table Hamil began to distinguish one from another by degrees; the fair-haired Anans, sister and brother, who spoke of their celebrated uncle, Winslow Anan, and his predictions concerning Hamil as his legitimate successor; Marjorie Staines, willowy, active, fresh as a stem of white jasmine, and inconsequent as a very restless bird; Philip Gatewood, grave, thin, prematurely saddened by the responsibility of a vast inheritance, consumed by a desire for an artistic career, looking at the world with his owlish eyes through the prismatic colors of a set palette.

There were others there whom as yet he had been unable to differentiate; smiling, well-mannered, affable people who chattered with more or less intimacy among themselves as though accustomed to meeting one another year after year in this winter rendezvous.  And everywhere he felt the easy, informal friendliness and goodwill of these young people.

“Are you being amused?” asked Shiela beside him.  “My father’s orders, you know,” she added demurely.

They stood up as Mrs. Carrick rose and left the table followed by the others; and he looked at Shiela expecting her to imitate her sister’s example.  As she did not, he waited beside her, his cigarette unlighted.

Presently she bent over the table, extended her arm, and lifted a small burning lamp of silver toward him; and, thanking her, he lighted his cigarette.

“Siesta?” she asked.

“No; I feel fairly normal.”

“That’s abnormal in Florida.  But if you really don’t feel sleepy—­if you really don’t—­we’ll get the Gracilis—­our fastest motor-boat—­and run down to the Beach Club and get father.  Shall we—­just you and I?”

“And the engineer?”

“I’ll run the Gracilis if you will steer,” she said quietly.

“I’ll do whichever you wish, Calypso, steer or run things.”

She looked up with that quick smile which seemed to transfigure her into something a little more than mortal.

“Why in the world have I ever been afraid of you?” she said.  “Will you come?  I think our galley is in commission....  Once I told you that Calypso was a land-nymph.  But—­time changes us all, you know—­and as nobody reads the classics any longer nobody will perceive the anachronism.”