"I had to protest! Oh, but he was a demon then," she added, and I clenched my fists, remembering what Gates had said. "But he used to be kind," she added, sadly, "and I ought to remember him for that, don't you suppose so? We have a wonderful library on the islands, and when I was very young he began my education. Do you know," she looked up, "I still remember my first lesson in grammar? He taught me by the days!"
"Quite a remarkable thing, that, to remember so far back," I smiled, whereupon she made a little grimace. "How do you mean—by the days?"
"I was taught a tomorrow, not alone because I could recognize today but because I remembered yesterday, and was shown how these were the past, present, and future tenses of our lives; that the present participle is Living, and the infinitive is——"
"To love?" I suggested.
"To live," she said evenly, and I bit my tongue. "He made me study awfully hard, but I rather liked it as there wasn't much else to do except play with Echochee, and she became tiresome occasionally. Later he started me at the piano, and the violin, and I loved to work after that. For he's quite a remarkable musician, really! I suppose our library must have a thousand books, and I've read nearly all of them—besides stacks of the modern ones we always brought from our semi-annual cruises 'to the world'—as he used to call those trips. Don't you simply adore Blasco?"
"I suppose you mean Ibañez," I said, rather pleased at being able to air this familiarity with literary personages.
"Ibañez, then," she casually agreed, "if you prefer calling him by his mother's name."—And, not knowing upon what hazy path this would lead me, I laughingly admitted:
"Well, I've only tackled one of his things, and haven't even finished that yet." Adding, with perhaps a slightly malicious desire to bring her superior knowledge to bay: "You read him in the original, I suppose?"
"Not freely enough to be quite relaxing. But on our cruise last summer we got a very good translation in French—really, much better than the English, I think."
Again I laughed, as a light entered my muddled outlook because of this astonishing information that accounted for much I had not been able to reconcile with her isolated life. From the moment she had mimicked the cook I had been kept in a state of wonderment. I had felt her superiority; I had marveled at the cultivation that clung about her as a royal robe. Now it was explained. Music, literature, languages!