This was obviously not because she was famished, though she had the healthy hunger of the creature not yet done with growing, but because, simply, she felt no necessity for speech. She was evidently thinking, for her eyes had the fixed absorption of a child's who dreams over his bread and milk, but conversation she had none. He studied her, amused partly, partly lost in her beauty, for indeed she was beautiful. She had a pure olive skin, running white into the neck--oh, the back of Margarita's neck! That tender nape with its soft, nearly blonde locks that curled short about it below the heavy waves of what she called her "real hair." That was chestnut, dark brown at night. Nature had given her long dark lashes with perfect verisimilitude, but had at the last moment capriciously decided against man's peace and hidden behind them, set deep behind them under flexible Italian brows, those curious slate-blue eyes that fixed her face in your mind inalterably. You could not forget her. I know, because I have been trying for twenty years. "You are not, I take it, accustomed to dining out, Miss Margarita?" said Roger, amused, contented, ignorant of the cause of his sudden sense of absolute _bien etre_, or attributing it, man like, to his good dinner. "Oh, yes," she answered, "I dine out very often. I like it better." He bit his lip with quick displeasure; she was merely eccentric, then, not naive. For like every other man Roger detested eccentric women. It has always been a marvel to me that women of distinct brain capacity so almost universally fail to realise that we like you better fashionable, even, than eccentric. You do not understand why, dear ladies: you think it must be that we prefer fashion to brains, but indeed it is not so. It is because to be fashionable is for you to be normal, at least, that we tolerate your sheeplike marches and counter-marches across the plain of society. "Where do you dine when you dine out?" he inquired coldly, to trap her at last into some explanation. "On the rocks," she answered serenely, "or under the trees. Sometimes on the sand close to the water. I like it better than in the house." Roger experienced a ridiculous sense of relief. "Do you dine alone?" he asked and she answered quietly, "Of course. My father always ate by himself, and Hester, too. Caliban will never let anyone see him eat: I have often tried, but he hides himself." The waiter brought them at this point an ivory-white salad of _endive_ set with ruby points of beet, drenched in pure olive-oil, and of this soothing luxury Margarita consumed two large plates in dreamy silence. "I like this food," she remarked at last, "I like it better than Hester's." Roger grew literally warm with satisfaction. He was still smiling when she spooned out a great mouthful of the delicate ice before her and under his amazed eyes set her teeth in it.