Sestrina seemed to like that explanation immensely. Her eyes shone with delight, as the pale gleams from the rising moon dripped like silver through the overhanging boughs and tropical loveliness of the mahogany trees. It was easy enough to see that the girl was deeply in love with the young Englishman. She opened her eyes and stared like a pleased, wondering child, and then she did exactly that which Clensy asked her to do—lifted one pretty sandalled foot up so that he might kiss her ankle. It was a pretty ankle, no mistake about that. But, oh, propriety! Oh, self-respecting maidenhood, alas! where wert thou at that moment?
“It’s not wrong, Monsieur Royal, to do that, is it?” she whispered as she quickly dropped her foot and arranged the delicate fringe of her sarong. She looked Clensy straight in the eyes. He made no reply. The first rapture that followed his impulsive act and the sudden serious stare of Sestrina’s eyes as she asked that question, rendered him speechless. In a flash he had realised that his mind, compared with the girl’s beside him, was full of sin.
“I always go and confess everything to kind Père Chaco, the priest, so I must be careful, you know,” murmured Sestrina in a meditative way, as though addressing her own reflections.
“Do you really?” said Clensy, as he turned his eyes away and stared thoughtfully into the shadows of the forest. Then as he sighed and gazed at the girl again, she placed her finger to her lips and gave Clensy a coquettish glance.
“Why do you dream?” said Sestrina softly, as she noticed how quiet he had suddenly become.
“I cannot help dreaming while in your presence, Sestrina.”
“My father will be very angry if he discovers that I have been out so late,” said the girl.
“Is your father religious and good like you, Sestrina?” said Clensy swiftly, taking advantage of the opportunity to get Sestrina’s private opinion of her parent.
“Yes, he is very religious, but he does not go to kind Père Chaco as he once did,” replied the girl, as she swung her foot and sighed.
Clensy did not press his advantage. He saw by the girl’s manner that, whatever her father’s sins were, she was not a party to them. As they sat there conversing, Clensy tried to probe the Haytian girl’s mind. He asked her many questions, and found that she was a child so far as her knowledge of the world was concerned. Her manner and her girlish views charmed him. She had not gripped him by the arm and, in fierce accents, tense with emotion, started to declaim materialistic mad views on social questions. She did not jump to her feet and, with flashing eyes and chin thrust towards his face in magnificent female aggressiveness, reveal some bitterness which rankled in her irate soul over some peculiar notion that resembled a kink in the brain. She had simply let Clensy touch her brow with his lips, and had said, “I know so little about the world and these things which you ask me; all I really know is, that you have made me feel happy.” Then she had looked quietly into his face for a moment and added: “It’s so good of God to let me meet you like this, and I’m sure Père Chaco won’t mind.” And so the fragile girl had conquered. With the almighty power of her own innocence she had accomplished that which a thousand designing, worldly women could never have accomplished. She held Clensy’s life in the rapture of a merciless grip. The young Englishman was doomed! He at once robed the girl in all the religious glamour that his mind was capable of conjuring up. She sat there beneath the mahogany trees, clothed in those lovely symbols of wistful beauty that come to the minds of men who aspire to find the world’s best in woman; his mind exalted her from the ruck of mere woman into some goddess-creature, possessing attributes divine. Sestrina did not realise her great victory over Clensy.