“I find it very hard to tell. I don’t think I can tell you it all.” “I don’t see why you should have come at all, unless you are going to tell me everything there is to tell. But if you’ve really funked it, I don’t care, you know.” Thus Peter, maintaining his bravado. “You don’t help me out.” The blue eyes rested on him critically. “But I suppose it’s not your fault. Since you don’t know anything about anything----” “I can’t give you a leg up. No.” She frowned a little, as if troubled by his phrasing, but resigned herself to it. “No; you can’t give me a leg up.” “I say--” He leaned forward with a sudden impulse. “Why don’t I go back with you? Or come out later? Lots of people going to Tahiti now, you know, since they’ve exhausted the Spanish Main. Plenty of attractions: drives round the island, perfect scenery, native customs on tap--ordeal by fire and hot stones. It’s in the advertisements along with the rates and sailings. No reason why I shouldn’t come.” She had drawn back while he spoke with a perfectly obvious terror. With parted lips, and coiled hair, and her very blood (it seemed) turned white, she looked like Greek tragic masks that he had seen in museums. These he had always thought grinning prevarications; now, he acknowledged their authenticity. His jauntiness faded into a stare. Then she pulled herself together, as Peter would have said, by slow, difficult degrees, like a kaleidoscope turned too slowly--pitiful to see. “No, Peter, you must never come to Tahiti. He--he couldn’t bear it.” “He?” “Your father.” “Oh--my father.” His imagination had not yet evoked his father. “I had forgotten him, for the moment.” “Forgotten him! What extraordinary things you say!” “Well, why shouldn’t I forget him? He hasn’t even taken the trouble to spend twenty-four hours in America to make my acquaintance.” Something acrid _had_ risen in the cup, and Peter’s lips were bitter. Her white fingers moved again to the folds of her veil, as if the frail mesh weighed intolerably upon her brows. “If you forget him, of course I can never explain. He is all there is.” She indulged then in an appraising glance. “You look kind and good. I didn’t think you would be undutiful.” Undutiful! It was her turn to introduce an unfamiliar vocabulary. “Undutiful!” Peter repeated. “What do you mean? That I’m expected to be grateful to him for being my father?” She smiled. She lifted her hands. She all but applauded him. “Yes, just that!” Peter stared. He had two favorite words with which to describe the legitimately surprising. One of them was “rum.” But such an idea as this called for the other. It was--positively--“rococo.”