I looked across at the mountains: purple blue they were, clear-cut against a marvelous sky. The air was very still. I could hear Arthur shrieking from the house. He had learned a number of fine, full-bodied Cuban-Spanish oaths lately, and was employing them in his most wheedling manner on Nora. The ox-carts went by on the road below. A bird swayed on the bourganvilla vine and sang. Down in the palm-grove I saw the flick of a peacock tail, and the orchids, themselves like lavender birds, in the distance, flowering from the smooth palm trunks. My eyes closed and I slept. When I awoke, someone was sitting cross-legged beside me, whistling "Sally in our Alley." I saw puttees and riding breeches, a hand holding a cigarette, and finally a blonde countenance which was turned upward to the sky. "Hello," I said. "How long have you been here?" "Hours," he answered. "Mavis Denton, you talk in your sleep, you do, somethin' awful!" I sat up abruptly. "What did I say?" I demanded. "First you snored some--" "I don't snore!" "You do,--Bill told me so. 'Wright,' he says to me, 'don't you never marry a girl who snores.'" There was no use arguing with Wright in a silly mood. "Go on," I said, resigned to heaven alone knew what eccentricities of speech and disclosure. "I'm going. First you snores a bit, as I remarked before I was so rudely interrupted. Who raised you, anyway, Mavis? Don't you know little girls must never contradict, interrupt, or otherwise distract old gentlemen? Well, after the snore--musical, it was--'Bill!' you says, entreating-like--'Bill,' you says, right out loud. And then, just like a movie heroine, 'Never!' you shouts, 'Never!', and you clinched your hands and ground your teeth as no lady had oughter!" "I never heard of anything so silly," I said, "You're making it all up!" Wright laughed. "I'm not, truly," he said, "although perhaps I have rendered it in a slightly more lurid manner than you did. But it's true, and I'm going to ask Bill what it's all about, so there!" "Don't you dare!" I said. "All right, I won't, if you will promise me never to blush again like you have been doing for the last three minutes. It is very disturbing, to a struggling poet who has long sought fresher similes for Dawn and all that sort of thing. You provided the simile, all right, but who in time could rhyme with Mavis?" At the mention of poetry, my hand unconsciously went toward the sheet of paper beside me. The orange rolled away and the wind provokingly caught the paper and fluttered it. "What's this?" said the audacious youth beside me. "Ha! I see Bill's fine Italian hand in this--" He picked up the paper, regardless of my pleas, and scanned it with a practised eye. "Your writing. Amanuensis now, eh? Hm--that doesn't sound like Bill. Wait a moment, I never saw such illegible calligraphy. At least one member of a doctor's family ought to write so a fellow can read it--" He laid the paper down.