“Anything else?”
“Sunshine all the year round. I have a house covered with scented things and buried in orange-trees. It is very beautiful. A little lonely at times—one can’t have Fifth Avenue and pick one’s own grape-fruit from the veranda, too.”
A silence fell between them; through the late afternoon stillness they heard the splash! splash! of leaping mullet in the lagoon. Suddenly a crimson-throated humming-bird whirred past, hung vibrating before a flowering creeper, then darted away.
“Spring is drifting northward,” he said. “To-morrow will be Easter Day—Pasque Florida.”
She rose, saying, carelessly, “I was not thinking of to-morrow; I was thinking of to-day,” and, walking across the cleared circle, she picked up her paddle. He followed her, and she looked around gayly, swinging the paddle to her shoulder.
“You said you were thinking of to-day,” he stammered. “It—it is our anniversary.”
She raised her eyebrows. “I am astonished that you remembered.… I think that I ought to go. The Dione will be in before long—”
“We can hear her whistle when she steams in,” he said.
“Are you actually inviting me to stay?” she laughed, seating herself on the soap-box once more.
They became very grave as he sat down on the ground at her feet, and, a silence threatening, she hastily filled it with a description of the yacht and Major Brent’s guests. He listened, watching her intently. And after a while, having no more to say, she pretended to hear sounds resembling a distant yacht’s whistle.