“Why, I cabled him as soon as we arrived at Barbados: ‘What would you like for a birthday present from the West Indies?’ I knew that he would remember we met on St. Valentine’s day and an answer could reach me at St. Thomas.”
“Couldn’t you buy him a souvenir without inquiring at great expense what he’d prefer?”
“Ye-es; but I thought it was a nice, affectionate question.”
“Well?”
“Well, he cabled one word, Charlotte.”
“I guessed that the moment you quoted your message. When you asked: ‘What shall I bring you from the West Indies?’ Duke promptly answered, ‘Yourself.’”
“Charlotte, you are positively uncanny! How did you manage to hit upon it?”
“It doesn’t take as much intellect as you fancy. You are as transparent as a plate of glass. Well, when he said ‘Yourself,’ how did you answer him?”
“It’s the only thing I don’t like to tell you, but I must. I reflected a full half-hour at Barbados. It was one of those heavenly moonlight nights not suitable for reflection. Then I wrote a message and sent it to the office by one of the colored waiters so that the hotel people shouldn’t read it. It said” (and here she turned her face away from me): “‘Deliveries from the West Indies are uncertain and expensive; come and get me.’—Do you think that was forward?”
I laughed irresistibly and a long time. “It certainly was not backward, but it was delicious,” I said at length, wiping the tears from my eyes. “However, he seems as impetuous and tempestuous as you, so perhaps it doesn’t matter.”