After dinner Merriam sat in a corner of the broad front galeria with Bibb, a Vermonter interested in hydraulic mining, and smoked and drank Scotch “smoke.”  The moonlit sea, spreading infinitely before him, seemed to separate him beyond all apprehension from his old life.  The horrid tragedy in which he had played such a disastrous part now began, for the first time since he stole on board the fruiter, a wretched fugitive, to lose its sharper outlines.  Distance lent assuagement to his view.  Bibb had opened the flood-gates of a stream of long-dammed discourse, overjoyed to have captured an audience that had not suffered under a hundred repetitions of his views and theories.

“One year more,” said Bibb, “and I’ll go back to God’s country.  Oh, I know it’s pretty here, and you get dolce far niente handed to you in chunks, but this country wasn’t made for a white man to live in.  You’ve got to have to plug through snow now and then, and see a game of baseball and wear a stiff collar and have a policeman cuss you.  Still, La Paz is a good sort of a pipe-dreamy old hole.  And Mrs. Conant is here.  When any of us feels particularly like jumping into the sea we rush around to her house and propose.  It’s nicer to be rejected by Mrs. Conant than it is to be drowned.  And they say drowning is a delightful sensation.”

“Many like her here?” asked Merriam.

“Not anywhere,” said Bibb, with a comfortable sigh.  She’s the only white woman in La Paz.  The rest range from a dappled dun to the colour of a b-flat piano key.  She’s been here a year.  Comes from—­ well, you know how a woman can talk—­ask ’em to say ‘string’ and they’ll say ‘crow’s foot’ or ‘cat’s cradle.’  Sometimes you’d think she was from Oshkosh, and again from Jacksonville, Florida, and the next day from Cape Cod.”

“Mystery?” ventured Merriam.

“M—­well, she looks it; but her talk’s translucent enough.  But that’s a woman.  I suppose if the Sphinx were to begin talking she’d merely say:  ’Goodness me! more visitors coming for dinner, and nothing to eat but the sand which is here.’  But you won’t think about that when you meet her, Merriam.  You’ll propose to her too.”

To make a hard story soft, Merriam did meet her and propose to her.  He found her to be a woman in black with hair the colour of a bronze turkey’s wings, and mysterious, remembering eyes that—­well, that looked as if she might have been a trained nurse looking on when Eve was created.  Her words and manner, though, were translucent, as Bibb had said.  She spoke, vaguely, of friends in California and some of the lower parishes in Louisiana.  The tropical climate and indolent life suited her; she had thought of buying an orange grove later on; La Paz, all in all, charmed her.

Merriam’s courtship of the Sphinx lasted three months, although be did not know that he was courting her.  He was using her as an antidote for remorse, until he found, too late, that he had acquired the habit.  During that time he had received no news from home.  Wade did not know where he was; and he was not sure of Wade’s exact address, and was afraid to write.  He thought he had better let matters rest as they were for a while.