Bill drove up presently, and as usual, the straggling children clustered around the car. He was always dear with children--white or black, brown or yellow. They were instantly his friends. Wiggles, riding proudly in the front seat, created quite a sensation, and Mercedes, climbing in to hold him in her pretty, primrose-dimity lap, had great difficulty in restraining him. "Where is his collar, Mavis?" she asked, clutching the frantic dog to her demure, white frills. "He was uncomfortable with it, in the heat," I answered. "Weren't you, Wigglesworth? So I took it off--" The car gave a sudden leap--and I knew that Bill had been listening for my answer; knew that he knew that I could not throw innocent Wiggles away, but that, when the mask had fallen from Richard Warren, I had, in a fit of anger, taken away the too-significant collar. It was in my trunk--but sometimes I wondered what had happened to my lucky charm of cool, green jade--flung from my window in a moment of pure rage. Once, I had looked for it--the day after Mercedes and I had siesta-ed in the palm-grove--not since. When we had arrived home, Wright drew me mysteriously aside. "Let me see those last two poems of yours again, will you, Mavis?" he said. "One of the men I was at college with wants me to go in with him on a book-shop and publishing venture--you know, odd books, quaintly bound, and all that sort of thing. He has his eye on a place in Greenwich Village, and just the right, short-haired, but delusively shrewd girl to run it--the shop end, I mean." "What do you want the verses for?" I asked suspiciously. Wright grinned. "If I am to be the Angel in this affair," he said, "how could I employ celestial qualities better than to boost my friends--and incidentally, myself? We can collect your poems, publish them in a sufficiently bizarre edition to attract attention--and, without letting Mr. John Denton's solid and conservative firm into the secret--you can astonish your husband, by Christmas, say, with a book of your own." "But," I argued, "they're not good enough--" "They're good enough for me," said Wright magnificently, "and it will be rather fun, having a business of this sort to play with. It's one way of revenging myself on those beastly tin-pans." I grew just a little excited, picturing Bill's astonishment. And I would not be there to hear his criticism. I had a dozen verses or more which Wright had not yet seen: the best, I thought, of all. And, of the poems I had styled "Cuban Pastels," the two he had just spoken of headed the group. 1 HAVANA HARBOR