"Don't let me startle you, please!" he said, as he stepped from the shadow of the trumpet-flower bush that had hitherto concealed him. Her arms came down slowly, her chin lowered; her pose, if you will, melted away. Her voice when she spoke was low and round and thrilled, and it sent an answering thrill through Harber. "I'm mad!" she said. "Moon-mad--or tropic-mad. I didn't hear you. I was worshipping the night!" "As I have been," said Harber, feeling a sudden pagan kinship with her mood. She smiled, and her smile seemed the most precious thing in the world. "You, too? But it isn't new to you ... and when the newness is gone every one--here at least--seems dead to it!" "Sometimes I think it's always new," replied Harber. "And yet I've had years of it ... but how did you know?" "You're Mr. Harber, aren't you?" "Yes. But---" "Only that I knew you were here, having heard of you from the Tretheways, and I'd accounted for every one else. I couldn't stay inside because it seemed to me that it was wicked when I had come so far for just this, to be inside stuffily dancing. One can dance all the rest of one's life in Michigan, you know! So----" "It's the better place to be--out here," said Harber abruptly. "Need we go in?" "I don't know," she said doubtfully. "Maybe you can tell me. You see, I've promised some dances. What's the usage here? Dare I run away from them?" "Oh, it might prove a three-day scandal if you did," said Harber. "But I know a bench off to the right, where it isn't likely you'll be found by any questing partner, and you needn't confess to having had a companion. Will you come and talk to me?" "I'm a bird of passage," she answered, smiling, "and I've only to unfold my wings and fly away from the smoke of scandal. Yes, I'll come--if you won't talk--too much. You see, after all, I won't flatter you. It's the night I want, not talk ... the wonderful night!" But, of course, they did talk. She was an American girl, she told him, and had studied art a little, but would never be much of a painter. She had been teaching classes in a city high school in the Middle West, when suddenly life there seemed to have gone humdrum and stale. She had a little money saved, not much, but enough if she managed well, and she'd boldly resigned and determined, once at least before she was too old, to follow spring around the world. She had almost given up the idea of painting now, but thought presently she might go in for writing, where, after all, perhaps, her real talent lay. She had gotten a letter of introduction in Suva to the Tretheways and she would be here until the next steamer after the morrow's.