"Rather!" she agreed gravely.
For a moment or two they eyed one another in silence, Whitaker wondering just how much of a fool she was thinking him and dubiously considering various expedients to ingratiate himself. She was really quite too charming to be neglected, after so auspicious an inauguration of their acquaintance. Momentarily he was becoming more convinced that she was exceptional. Certain he was he had never met any woman quite like her—not even the fair but false Miss Carstairs of whom he had once fancied himself so hopelessly enamoured. Here he divined an uncommon intelligence conjoined with matchless loveliness. Testimony to the former quality he acquired from eyes serenely violet and thoughtful. As for the latter, he reflected that few professional beauties could have stood, as this woman did, the acid test of that mercilessly brilliant morning.
"I don't seem to think of anything useful to say," he ventured. "Can you help me out? Unless you'd be interested to know that my name's Whitaker—Hugh Whitaker—?"
She acknowledged the information merely by a brief nod. "It seems to me," she said seriously, "that the pressing question is, what are you going to do about that ankle? Shall you be able to walk?"
"Hard to say," he grumbled, a trifle dashed. He experimented gingerly, moving his foot this way and that and shutting his teeth on groans that the test would surely have evoked had he been alone. "'Fraid not. Still, one can try."
"It isn't sprained?"
"Oh, no—just badly wrenched. And, as I said, this is the second time within a week."
With infinite pains and the aid of both hands and his sound foot, he lifted himself and contrived to stand erect for an instant, then bore a little weight on the hurt ankle—and blenched, paling visibly beneath his ineradicable tan.
"I don't suppose," he said with effort—"they grow—crutches—on this neck of land?"
And he was about to collapse again upon the sands when, without warning, he found the woman had moved to his side and caught his hand, almost brusquely passing his arm across her shoulders, so that she received no little of his weight.