“Kept awake all night listening to my story!” She marvelled.

“Yes.  You don’t think I am complaining, do you?  I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.  Blunt in a ragged old jacket and a white tie and that incisive polite voice of his seemed strange and weird.  It seemed as though he were inventing it all rather angrily.  I had doubts as to your existence.”

“Mr. Blunt is very much interested in my story.”

“Anybody would be,” I said.  “I was.  I didn’t sleep a wink.  I was expecting to see you soon—­and even then I had my doubts.”

“As to my existence?”

“It wasn’t exactly that, though of course I couldn’t tell that you weren’t a product of Captain Blunt’s sleeplessness.  He seemed to dread exceedingly to be left alone and your story might have been a device to detain us . . .”

“He hasn’t enough imagination for that,” she said.

“It didn’t occur to me.  But there was Mills, who apparently believed in your existence.  I could trust Mills.  My doubts were about the propriety.  I couldn’t see any good reason for being taken to see you.  Strange that it should be my connection with the sea which brought me here to the Villa.”

“Unexpected perhaps.”

“No.  I mean particularly strange and significant.”

“Why?”

“Because my friends are in the habit of telling me (and each other) that the sea is my only love.  They were always chaffing me because they couldn’t see or guess in my life at any woman, open or secret. . .”

“And is that really so?” she inquired negligently.

“Why, yes.  I don’t mean to say that I am like an innocent shepherd in one of those interminable stories of the eighteenth century.  But I don’t throw the word love about indiscriminately.  It may be all true about the sea; but some people would say that they love sausages.”

“You are horrible.”

“I am surprised.”

“I mean your choice of words.”

“And you have never uttered a word yet that didn’t change into a pearl as it dropped from your lips.  At least not before me.”

She glanced down deliberately and said, “This is better.  But I don’t see any of them on the floor.”

“It’s you who are horrible in the implications of your language.  Don’t see any on the floor!  Haven’t I caught up and treasured them all in my heart?  I am not the animal from which sausages are made.”

She looked at me suavely and then with the sweetest possible smile breathed out the word:  “No.”

And we both laughed very loud.  O! days of innocence!  On this occasion we parted from each other on a light-hearted note.  But already I had acquired the conviction that there was nothing more lovable in the world than that woman; nothing more life-giving, inspiring, and illuminating than the emanation of her charm.  I meant it absolutely—­not excepting the light of the sun.