"You are. You can't help it. Tell me--as inoffensively as possible--are you here to begin your work?" "M-my work?" "Yes, on the Cardross estate--" "You have heard of that!" he exclaimed, surprised. "Y-es--" negligently. "Petty gossip circulates here. A cracker at West Palm Beach built a new chicken coop, and we all heard of it. Tell me, do you still desire to see me again?" "I do--to pay a revengeful debt or two." "Oh! I have offended you? Pay me now, if you please, and let us end this indiscretion." "You will let me see you again, won't you?" "Why? Mr. Hamil." "Because I--I _must_!" "Oh! You are becoming emphatic. So I am going.... And I've half a mind to take you back and present you to my family.... Only it wouldn't do for _me_; any other girl perhaps might dare--under the circumstances; but _I_ can't--and that's all I'll tell you." Hamil, standing straight and tall, straw hat tucked under one arm, bent toward her with the formality and engaging deference natural to him. "You have been very merciful to me; only a girl of your caste could afford to. Will you forgive my speaking to you as I did?--when I said 'Calypso!' I have no excuse; I don't know why I did. I'm even sorrier for myself than for you." "I _was_ hurt.... Then I supposed that you did not mean it. Besides"--she looked up with her rare smile--"I knew you, Mr. Hamil, in the boat this morning. I haven't really been very dreadful." "You knew even _then_?" "Yes, I did. The Palm Beach News published your picture a week ago; and I read all about the very remarkable landscape architect who was coming to turn the Cardross jungle into a most wonderful Paradise." "You knew me all that time?" "All of it, Mr. Hamil." "From the moment you climbed into my boat?" "Practically. Of course I did not look at you very closely at first.... Does that annoy you? It seems to ... or something does, for even in the dusk I can see your ever-ready blush--" "I don't know why you pretend to think me such a fool," he protested, laughing; "you seemed to take that for granted from the very first." "Why not? You persistently talked to me when you didn't know me--you're doing it now for that matter!--and you began by telling me that I was fool-hardy, not really courageous in the decent sense of the word, and that I was a self-conscious stick and a horribly inhuman and unnatural object generally--and all because I wouldn't flirt with you--" His quick laughter interrupted her. She ventured to laugh a little too--a very little; and that was the charm of her to him--the clear-eyed, delicate gravity not lightly transformed. But when her laughter came, it came as such a surprisingly lovely revelation that it left him charmed and silent. "I wonder," she said, "if you can be amusing--except when you don't mean to be." "If you'll give me a chance to try--" "Perhaps. I was hardly fair to you in that boat." "If you knew me in the boat this morning, why did you not say so?"