"My name is Margarita," she replied directly and pleasantly, "I never had but one parent and he died a few days ago. I live by the sea."
An ugly thrill shot down his spine. No healthy person likes to be alone with a mad woman, and under a brilliant fleeting light he studied her curiously only to receive the certain conviction that whatever his companion might be, she was not mad. Her slate-blue eyes were calm and bright, her lips rather noticeably firm for all their curves—and the mad woman's mouth bewrayeth her inevitably under scrutiny. Nor was she drugged into some passing vacancy of mind: her whole atmosphere breathed a perfectly conscious control of her movements, however misguided the event might prove them. Before this conviction he hesitated slightly.
"You have another name, however," he said gently, "and what do you mean by the sea? What sea?"
For it occurred to him that although her English was perfect, she might be an utter stranger to the country, unthinkably abandoned, with sufficient means to salve her betrayer's conscience.
"Is there more than one sea, then?" she inquired of him with interest. "I thought there was only mine. It is a very large one with high waves—and cold," she added as an after-thought.
Roger gasped. "You did not tell me your other name," he said.
"Joséphine," she replied readily, pronouncing the name in the French manner.
"But you have another still?"
"Yes. Dolores," she said, with an evidently accustomed Spanish accent.
"And the last name?" he persisted in despair, noting with some busy corner of his mind that they were drifting down Fifth Avenue.