"A widow with yellow hair and blue eyes!" murmured Selden, entranced. "Precisely. Your train, however, leaves to-night—unless you mean to remain here on a diet of bird-seed." [Pg 40] [Pg 40] Selden smiled absently. Bird-seed had no terror for him. "Besides," he said, "I'm rather good at handball." A moment later he looked around, presumably for Harroll. That young man was already half-way to the jasmine-covered arbor, where a young girl sat, dry-eyed, deathly pale, staring out to sea. The sea was blue and smiling; the soft thunder of the surf came up to her. She heard the gulls mewing in the sky and the hum of bees in the wind-stirred blossoms; she saw a crested osprey plunge into the shallows and a great tarpon fling its mass of silver into the sun. Paroquets gleaming like living jewels rustled and preened in the china-trees; black and gold butterflies, covered with pollen, crawled over and over the massed orange bloom. Ah, the mask of youth that the sly world wore to mock her! Ah, the living lie of the sky, and the false, smooth sea fawning at her feet! Little persuasive breezes came whispering, plucking at the white hem of her robe to curry favor; the ingratiating surf purred, blinking with a million iridescent bubbles. The smug smile of nature appalled her; its hypocrisy sickened her; and she bent her dark eyes fiercely on the sea and clinched her little hands. [Pg 41] [Pg 41] "Give up my dead!" she whispered. "Give up my dead!" "Catharine!" Dazed, she rose to her sandalled feet, the white folds of her robe falling straight and slim. "Catharine!" Her voiceless lips repeated his name; she swayed, steadying herself by the arm around her waist.
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