“Our choice has offended these genial bandits,” Kirk observed as he helped her to a seat.  “When shall we tell the lad to bring us off?”

“Four o’clock,” answered Mrs. Cortlandt.  “I arranged with the captain to be ready at that hour, so, you see, we have the whole day ahead of us.”

Across the limpid shallows they glided, bravely propelled by their nine-year-old oarsman, but when the bow of their skiff grated upon the bottom they were still some yards from the shore.

“Looks as if we’d have to wade,” said Kirk, then called to one of the near-by boatmen to lend the child a hand.  But the fellow replied gruffly in some unintelligible jargon.

“He says he carries his passengers ashore in his arms,” Edith translated.

“Really?  Competition is spirited even on this heavenly isle.  Well, that’s easy!” Anthony untied his low shoes, kicked them off, and rolled up his trousers.

“Permit me to help you,” he said, “without embarrassing our pilot.”

“Oh!  I want to wade, too,” the woman exclaimed, enviously, as he stepped out, “but—­it’s too pebbly.”

She stood up and allowed him to gather her in his arms.  Then for the first time she felt his strength as her body leaned to his.  Slowly he picked his way ashore while she reclined in his embrace, her arms about his neck, her smooth cheek brushing his.  A faint, intoxicating perfume she used affected him strangely, increasing the poignant sense of her nearness; a lock of her hair caressed him.  When he deposited her gently upon her feet he saw her face had gone white and that she was trembling.

“Did I hurt you?” he queried, quickly.

“Oh no!” she answered, but as she turned away he saw her breathe as if for the first time since he had taken her up.

His own face was glowing as he waded back to fetch the lunch-basket and his foot-gear.  Under the circumstances he had done the only natural, the only possible thing, yet it had queerly perturbed them both.  There was an artificial note in their voices as they mounted to the village, and unconsciously they avoided each other’s glances.

A narrow, crooked street, fronted by old stone houses, opened before them, and the many tints they had seen from a distance became more pronounced.  Even the rough flags and cobbles under foot were of a faint lichen gray, chrome yellow, or pink, as if painted at cost of infinite labor.  Out of dark, open doorways peered swarthy faces, naked bronze children scampered away on fat legs at their approach, and in one house were a number of cassocked priests droning in Spanish.  Everywhere was the same slumberous content, the same peaceful buzz of bees and birds and soft-toned human voices.

The two visitors explored the village, even to the quaint, tawdry chapel, with its impossible blues and rusted gilt, and noon found them eager to investigate the contents of their lunch-basket.  Taking a random path up the hill, they came at last to a spring of cool water, and here they spread their meal under a mango-tree bent beneath tons of fruit.