An ancient bleached pine log had drifted into a little nook of rocks, where it was upheld from the floor by short, broken-off, horizontal limbs to a convenient height for a seat. It looked like a great white thousand-legged worm with porcupine quills in its back, said Charmian, as she seated herself between two of the upper-side stumps of limbs. “What a day!” she continued. “I never was more ambitious in my life, Doctor, but I just want to sit here and ambish with my eyes half closed. I didn’t know one could be lazy and ambitious at the same time. I imagine dope must affect one something like this. Gee, but I could slay pirates on the Spanish Main this afternoon--that is, if they’d move the Spanish Main up here to this log and I could keep from gaping long enough to draw my cutlass. Don’t know that I’d want to kill pirates, either--I’d rather be a pirate myself and murder honest people. But either would be an effort--unless I could sit here and slay ’em with the evil eye.” She made an arm-rest of one of the stumpy branches and sank her round chin in one hand. The posture pushed up one ruddy cheek and caused her red lips to show a pout, and that odd little upward flirt at one corner lent them an unconscious smile. The long dark lashes, so delicately upturned at the end, drooped downward. Her profile stood out clean-cut against the flimsy light of the winter sun. Her throat showed soft and dimpled and dusky. Her hoard of hair had loosened and slipped downward in artistic disarray. She relaxed, eyes half closed, and her sinuous body slackened as it settled into unrestrained repose. Her full bosom rose and fell as softly and smoothly as the oily ground swell of a lazy tropic bay. Inman Shonto likened womanly beauty to that of flowers. He knew lily girls and primrose girls, daisy girls and violet and pansy girls, even sunflower girls. But here was a rose girl--a great passionate American beauty rose, bold in colouring, strong and stanch, upright and unafraid, dominant, outstanding amid the other flowers, but owner of all the loveliness and grace of the lesser blossoms, as delicate of texture and as compelling in its tenderness.