I had not calculated on the effect of my idle words. A vivid scarlet spread to the roots of the black hair.
"On the boat," she answered, "we talked, your Bill and I—and since then, also. And I have learned a little of the reverence for women that your fine men have: a little of the way they guard and protect them—not by bars and bolts and commands, but by love and chivalry and thoughtfulness. I have seen that too, in my Father, a little. But, after all, my Father married Mother, and so, it is different with him. And he has never talked to me as he would to the daughter, perhaps, of an American wife—"
I thought of my own Father and knew a swift pang of pity, for this rather rudderless little craft.
"It was through Billy that I got to know you," Mercedes went on—"he was always talking about you. And you—you always held me off—"
Something very warm and sweet crept into my heart, and I put my hand out, across the space between.
"I'm sorry," I said, "awfully sorry, Mercedes,—you see, perhaps I wasn't quite used to girls."
"You'll really be my friend now?" she asked, naïvely: and I was conscious that I spoke the whole truth as I answered,
"I am your friend, Mercedes,—never doubt it."
Our hands clasped on that, and within ten minutes, her quiet breathing told me that she slept. I lay awake a little longer, thinking very hard. So Bill had really seen the best of her after all. He had not told me, for I had never tried to know, even second hand. He would have let me go on believing the girl to be heartless and silly, and admiration-loving, nothing else. It was not fair! And then I stopped to realize that I had not wanted to believe her anything else. Before I fell asleep, I had absolved Mercedes Howells from deliberately trying to flirt with my husband. She would have been my friend more than his, had I wished her to be. Failing that, she had turned to the person, who, oddly enough, had apparently comprehended her little complexities. I looked over at the serene face, the heavy, white lids, with their weight of dark lashes, folded over the big eyes. A little smile curved the lovely, full mouth, and she slept, as a child sleeps, one hand under her soft cheek.
It was very still. The palm leaves rustled faintly over my head, and the sunlight fell hot and golden through the trees. My eyes closed in spite of myself, and with a very tender impulse toward my new friend, I turned on my side and slept.