“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.

These were the bare facts.  Harber gave a good many more than he got, he told me, upon the theory that nothing so provoked confidence as giving it.  He was a little mad himself that night, he admits, or else very, very sane.  As you will about that.  But, from the moment she began to talk, the thought started running through his head that there was fate in this meeting.

There was a sort of passionate fineness about her that caught and answered some instinct in Harber ... and I’m afraid they talked more warmly than the length of their acquaintance justified, that they made one another half-promises, not definite, perhaps, but implied; promises that....

“I must go in,” she said at last, reluctantly.

He knew that she must, and he made no attempt to gainsay her.

“You are going to America,” she went on.  “If you should——­”

And just at that moment, Harber says, anything seemed possible to him, and he said eagerly:  “Yes—­if you will—­I should like——­”

How well they understood one another is evident from that.  Neither had said it definitely, but each knew.

“Have you a piece of paper?” she asked.

Harber produced a pencil, and groped for something to write upon.  All that his pockets yielded was a sealed envelope.  He gave it to her.

She looked at it closely, and saw in the brilliant moonshine that it was sealed and stamped and addressed.

“I’ll spoil it for mailing,” she said.

“It doesn’t matter,” Harber told her ineptly.  “Or you can write it lightly, and I’ll erase it later.”

There was a little silence.  Then suddenly she laughed softly, and there was a tiny catch in the voice.  “So that you can forget?” she said bravely.  “No!  I’ll write it fast and hard ... so that you can ... never ... forget!”

And she gave him first his pencil and envelope, and afterward her hand, which Harber held for a moment that seemed like an eternity and then let go.  She went into the house, but Harber didn’t follow her.  He went off to his so-called hotel.