"You'll be back in a day or two?" he inquired. And laughed violently when the subtlety of his own wit struck him.
"In a day or two or not at all. Good-bye, Stirrups."
"Bye."
The sun blazed on her coppery hair and on the white skin that never burned, as she walked slowly across the yacht's deck and disappeared below.
While she was writing in her cabin, the Chihuahua dropped her anchors. Miss Cassillis listened to the piping, the thud of feet on deck, the rattle and distant sound of voices. Then she continued her note:
I merely desire to run away. I don't know why, Mother, dear. But the longing to bolt has been incubating for many years. And now it's too strong to resist. I don't quite understand how it came to a crisis on deck just now, but I looked at Stirrups, whose skin is too pink, and at Father, who had lunched too sumptuously, and at the people on deck, all digesting in a row—and then at the green woods on shore, and the strip of white where a fairy surf was piling up foam into magic castles and snowy bat[26]tlements, ephemeral, exquisite. And all at once it came over me that I must go.
Don't be alarmed. I shall provision a deck canoe, take a tent, some rugs and books, and paddle into that lagoon. If you will just let me alone for two or three days, I promise I'll return safe and sound, and satisfied. For something has got to be done in regard to that longing of mine. But really, I think that if you and Father won't understand, and if you send snooping people after me, I won't come back at all, and I'll never marry Stirrups. Please understand me, Mother, dear.
Cecil.
This effusion she pinned to her pillow, then rang for the steward and ordered the canoe to be brought alongside, provisioned for a three days' shooting trip.
So open, frank, and guileless were her orders that nobody who took them suspected anything unusual; and in the full heat and glare of the afternoon siesta, when parents, fiancé, and assorted guests were all asleep and in full process of digestion and the crew of the Chihuahua was drowsing from stem to stern, a brace of sailors innocently connived at her escape, aided her into the canoe, and, doubting nothing, watched her paddle away through the inlet, and into the[27] distant lagoon, which lay sparkling in golden and turquoise tints, set with palms like a stupid picture in a child's geography.
Later, the Chihuahua fired a frantic gun. Later still, two boats left the yacht, commanded respectively by one angry parent and one fiancé, profoundly bored.[28]