“Did they?  I don’t believe it.  They just pretended, and there is no pretense between Anthony and me”—­she stooped and kissed me—­“they just pretended, Elizabeth, and the reason that I love Anthony is because we don’t pretend.”

After that I felt that I need fear nothing.  Nancy and Anthony—­freedom and self-confidence—­why should I try to match their ideals with my own of yesterday?  Yet, as I laid my book aside, I resolved that Olaf should know of Anthony.

I had my opportunity the next day.  Olaf came over to sit in my garden and again we had tea.  He was much pleased when he knew that Nancy and I would be his guests on Wednesday.

“Come early.  Do you swim?  We can run the launch to the beach—­or, better still, dive in the deeper water near my boat.”

“Nancy swims,” I told him.  “I don’t.  And I am not sure that we can come early.  Nancy and Anthony usually play golf in the morning.”

“Who is Anthony?”

“Anthony Peak.  The man she is going to marry.”

He hesitated a moment, then said, “Bring him, too.”  His direct gaze met mine, and his direct question followed.  “Does she love him?”

“Of course.”

“It is not always ‘of course.’” He stopped and talked of other things, but in some subtle fashion I was aware that my news had been a shock to him, and that he was trying to adjust himself to it, and to the difference that it must make in his attitude toward Nancy.

* * * * *

When I told Nancy that Anthony had been invited, she demanded, “How did Olaf Thoresen know about him?”

“I told him you were engaged.”

“But why, Elizabeth?  Why shout it from the housetops?”

“Well, I didn’t want him to be hurt.”

“You are taking a lot for granted.”

I shrugged my shoulders.  “We won’t quarrel, and a party of four is much nicer than three.”

As it turned put, however, Anthony could not go.  He was called back to Boston on business.  That was where Fate again stepped in.  It was, I am sure, those three days of Anthony’s absence which turned the scale of Nancy’s destiny.  If he had been with us that first morning on the boat Olaf would not have dared....

Nancy wore her white linen and her gray-velvet coat, and a hat with a gull’s wing.  She carried her bathing suit.  “He intends, evidently, to entertain us in his own way.”

Olaf’s yacht was modern, but there was a hint of the barbaric in its furnishings.  The cabin into which we were shown and in which Nancy was to change was in strangely carved wood, and there was a wolfskin on the floor in front of the low bed.  The coverlet was of a fine-woven red-silk cloth, weighed down by a border of gold and silver threads.  On the wall hung a square of tapestry which showed a strange old ship with sails of blue and red and green, and with golden dragon-heads at stem and stern.