"Tag!" he laughed, touching her on the shoulder. "Tag!" he reiterated. "You're It!"
The anger of her blazing dark eyes scorched him.
"You fool!" she cried, lifting her finger with what he considered, undue intimacy to his toothbrush moustache. "As if that could disguise you!"
"But my dear lady …" he began to protest his certain unacquaintance with her.
Her retort, which broke off his speech, was as unreal and bizarre as everything else which had gone before. So quick was it, that he failed to see whence the tiny silver revolver had been drawn, the muzzle of which was not presented merely toward his abdomen, but pressed closely against it.
"My dear lady…" he tried again.
"I won't talk with you," she shut him off. "Go back to your schooner, and go away…" He guessed the inaudible sob of the pause, ere she concluded, "Forever."
This time his mouth opened to speech that was aborted on his lips by the stiff thrust of the muzzle of the weapon into his abdomen.
"If you ever come back the Madonna forgive me I shall shoot myself."
"Guess I'd better go, then," he uttered airily, as he turned to the skiff, toward which he walked in stately embarrassment, half-filled with laughter for himself and for the ridiculous and incomprehensible figure he was cutting.