"Everything has gone wrong," she said. "I came to thank you--and everything turned out so differently--and I was dreadfully rude to you--" She covered her face with her hands. "Then _you_ wrote me that letter," he said, slowly. In the silence of the gathering dusk the electric lamps snapped alight, flooding the arbor with silvery radiance. He said: "If a man had written me that letter I should have desired his friendship and offered mine." She dropped her hands and looked at him. "Thank you for speaking to Calvert," she said, rising hastily; "I have been desperately in need of work. My pride is quite dead, you see--one or the other of us had to die." She looked down with a gay little smile. "If it wouldn't spoil you I should tell you what I think of you. Meanwhile, as servitude becomes man, you may tie my shoe for me--Marlitt's shoe that pinched you.... Tie it tightly, so that I shall not lose it again.... Thank you." As he rose, their eyes met once more; and the perilous sweetness in hers fascinated him. She drew a deep, unsteady breath. "Will you take me home?" she asked. PASQUE FLORIDA The steady flicker of lightning in the southwest continued; the wind freshened, blowing in cooler streaks across acres of rattling rushes and dead marsh-grass. A dull light grew through the scudding clouds, then faded as the mid-day sun went out in the smother, leaving an ominous red smear overhead. Gun in hand, Haltren stood up among the reeds and inspected the landscape. Already the fish-crows and egrets were flying inland, the pelicans had left the sandbar, the eagles were gone from beach and dune. High in the thickening sky wild ducks passed over Flyover Point and dropped into the sheltered marshes among the cypress. As Haltren stood undecided, watching the ruddy play of lightning, which came no nearer than the horizon, a squall struck the lagoon. Then, amid the immense solitude of marsh and water, a deep sound grew--the roar of the wind in the wilderness. The solemn paeon swelled and died away as thunder dies, leaving the air tremulous. "I'd better get out of this," said Haltren to himself. He felt for the breech of his gun, unloaded both barrels, and slowly pocketed the cartridges. Eastward, between the vast salt river and the ocean, the dunes were smoking like wind-lashed breakers; a heron, laboring heavily, flapped inland, broad pinions buffeting the gale. "Something's due to happen," said Haltren, reflectively, closing the breech of his gun. He had hauled his boat up an alligator-slide; now he shoved it off the same way, and pulling up his hip-boots, waded out, laid his gun in the stern, threw cartridge-sack and a dozen dead ducks after it, and embarked among the raft of wind-tossed wooden decoys.