That, then, was what all the other four men were doing while he was reading and writing, or while, with narrowed, scrutinizing eyes, he followed Chiquita’s languid flight.  He had not seen Chiquita for a week; he had been so busy getting the first part of his monograph into shape that he had not come to the reef.  And all that week, the other men had been -.  A word from the university slang came into his mind — twosing — came into it with a new significance.  How descriptive that word was!  How concrete!  Twosing!

He took up his book again.  He glued his eyes to the print.  Five minutes passed; he was gazing at the same words.  But now instead of floating off the page, they engaged in little dances, dizzyingly concentric.  Suddenly something that was not of the mind interposed another obstacle to concentration, a jagged, purple shadow.

It was Chiquita.

Frank leaped to his feet and stood staring.  The quickness of his movement — ordinarily he moved measuredly — frightened her.  She fluttered, drifted away, paused.  Frank stiffened.  His immobility reassured her.  She drifted nearer.  Something impelled Frank to hold his rigid pose.  But, for some unaccustomed reason, his hand trembled.  His book dropped noiselessly on to the soft grass.

Chiquita floated down, closer than ever before.

She had undoubtedly just waked up.  The dew of dreams still lay on her luscious lips and in her great black eyes.  Scarlet flowers, flat-petaled, black-stamened, wreathed her dusky hair.  Scarlet bands outlined her dusky shoulders.  Scarlet streamers trailed in her wake.  Never had she seemed more lazy and languid, more velvety and voluptuous, more colorful and sumptuous.

Frank stared and stared.  Then, following an inexplicable impulse, he whistled as he had heard Honey whistle; and called as he had heard Honey call, the plaintive, entreating note of the mating male bird.

The same look which had come into Lulu’s face came into Chiquita’s, a look of wonder and alarm and -.  She trembled, but she sank slowly, head foremost like a diver.

Frank continued softly to call and whistle.  After an interval, another mysterious instinct impelled him to stop.  Chiquita’s lips moved; from them came answering sound, faint, breathy, scarcely voiced but exquisitely musical, exquisitely feminine, the call of the mating female bird.

When she stopped, Frank took it up.  He raised his hand to her gently.  As if that gave her confidence, she floated nearer, so close that he could have touched her.  But some new wisdom taught him not to do that.  She sank lower and lower until she was just above him.  Frank did not move — nor speak now.  She fluttered and continued to sink.  Now he could look straight into her eyes.  Frank had never really looked into a woman’s eyes before.  The depth of Chiquita’s was immeasurable.  There were dreams on the surface.  But his gaze pierced through the dreams, through layer on layer of purple black, to where stars lay.  Some emotion that constantly grew in her seemed to melt and fuse all these layers; but the stars still held their shine.