“You haven’t told us yet,” Anthony persisted, “where you got it.”

“No?  Well, Elizabeth will tell you.  It’s rather a long story.  I am going into the water.  Come on, Bob.”

She left the cloak with me.  Anthony followed her and the others.  I sat alone under a great orange umbrella and wondered if Anthony would ask me about the cloak.

He did not, and when Nancy came back finally with her hair down and blowing in the wind to dry, Anthony was with her.  The cloud was gone from his face, in the battle with the wares he had forgotten his vexation.

But he remembered when he saw the cloak.  “Tell me about it, Nancy.”

“I got it from Elizabeth’s viking.”

That was the calm way in which she put it.

“He isn’t my viking,” I told her.

“Well, you were responsible for him.”

“Do you mean to say,” Anthony demanded, “that you accepted a gift like that from a man you didn’t know?”

Nancy, hugging herself in the cloak, said, “I felt that I knew him very well.”

“How long was he here?”

“Three days.  I saw him twice.”

“I don’t think I quite like the—­idea—­” Anthony began, then broke off.  “Of course you have a right to do as you please.”

“Of course,” said Nancy, with a flame in her cheek.

“But it would please me very much if you would send it back to him.”

“If I wanted to,” she told him, “I couldn’t.”

“Why not?”

“Can you mail parcel post packages to the—­Flying Dutchman?  Or express things to—­to Odin?”

“I don’t in the least know what you are talking about, Nancy.”

“Well, he sailed in and he sailed out.  He didn’t leave any address.  He left the cloak—­and a rather intriguing memory, Anthony.”

That was all the satisfaction she would give him.  And I am not sure that he deserved more at her hands.  The agreement between them had been—­absolute freedom.

I am convinced that if it had not been for the garden party I should never have shown Olaf’s letter to Nancy.  The garden party is an annual event.  We always hold it in August, when the “off-islanders” crowd the hotels, and when money is more plentiful than at any other time during the year.

Nancy had charge of the fish pond.  I had helped her to make the fish, which were gay objects of painted paper, numbered to indicate a corresponding prize package, and to be caught with a dangling line from a lily-wreathed artificial pool.

The day of the garden party was a glorious one—­with the air so clear that the flying pennants of the decorated booths, and the gowns of the women, gained brilliancy and beauty from the shining atmosphere.