"The Oasis it is, and we'll put it on the map some day, see if we don't!"
After a while I told her pretty much everything from the beginning of our cruise: of Tommy, Monsieur, and Gates, of Smilax, of seeing her in Havana. I scrupulously avoided any mention of having been bowled over by her beauty, or of the dream, and was inclined to treat the paper ball episode with a laugh; but here she interrupted me, saying:
"But I was very serious, really, and scared almost to death. You surely know I must have been to've done it! The whole thing came so suddenly—like a frightful storm!"
"Then you hadn't always been at outs with him—or forbidden him to cross to your little island?" I asked.
"Mercy, no—that is, not my father. The other men, of course, were on a footing of servants—to me, at any rate. It was only after we got home two days ago, after Echochee and I were alone again, that I kept them away by—by threatening——"
"Don't say what—it hurts me," I interrupted her quickly. "I saw your wonderful courage from our hiding place."
"Everyone was quite friendly up to the time we reached Havana," she continued, in a rather forced, even voice. "We were there three days before your yacht came—though I didn't know it was yours until today—and that afternoon I'd been up in the Prado with Echochee doing a lot of shopping. We always bought every conceivable thing on those semi-yearly trips. Well, when we got back on board my father rather balked about taking me off again to dinner, but I held him to it because he'd previously promised. I think that he had grown so sensate to dangers that he felt one then, but couldn't locate it."
"Because we were anchored so close to you?"
"I don't really know. But it was something. It wasn't a pleasant dinner from the outset, because I resented his devilish mood and was disgusted with him for being afraid. That doesn't sound very nice," she added, half apologetically, "but, you know, there had always been something subtly antagonistic within me that—oh, I can't express it, but I'd never felt very close to him, ever since I can remember. It was largely my fault, I suppose. But I'd had glimpses of his frightfully cruel nature. Then Echochee, who came to nurse me when I was little, always hated him, and I adored her—so, of course, her influence counted. You really think she's coming through all right?"