But in spite of their equivocal situation, Edith seemed fully to have regained her spirits.  Even the prospect of spending the night in this place apparently did not dismay her.

“We have created quite a sensation,” she said, laughingly.  “I wonder if it makes the animals in the zoo as nervous to be stared at.”

Kirk was half puzzled, half relieved by the lightness of her mood.

“If you have finished this health-food,” he remarked, “we’ll go back to the plaza and wait for the launch.  I’m as full of cocoanut as a shell.”

They descended to the square again, stared at all the way through open doors and followed by a subdued murmur of comment.  Then they sat for a long time watching the stars, half minded not to regret the circumstance that had left them stranded together in such pleasant surroundings.

As if in despair over their impossible predicament, Edith gave way to a spirit of reckless vivacity, and Kirk, with a man’s somewhat exaggerated sympathy for a woman’s sensitive feelings, loyally strove to help her make the best of things in her own way.  It was like a woman, he reflected, to follow her mood to the last extreme, and, being a man, he was not displeased.  The change in her manner was too elusive for him to analyze.  There was no real concession of her reserve—­no sacrifice of the feminine privilege of prompt and complete withdrawal.  If he had struck a false note, he knew that she would have turned frigid in an instant.  But he could not help feeling that some barrier which had existed between them had been magically removed.  Her apparent obliviousness to all that under the circumstances might have troubled her was a subtle compliment to himself, and soon he, too, forgot that there was anything in the world beyond their present relation to each other.

It was on their return to the house that the climax came, leaving him strangely shaken.

Their course took them past a tiny cantina.  It was open in front, and brightly lighted, although at this hour most of the houses were dark and the village lay wrapped in the inky shadow of the mountain behind.  Within, several men were carousing—­dark-haired, swarthy fellows, who seemed to be fishermen.  Drawn by the sound of argument, the strangers paused a moment to watch them.  The quarrel seemed a harmless affair, and they were about to pass on, when suddenly one of the disputants lunged at his antagonist with a knife, conjured from nowhere, and the two came tumbling out into the street, nearly colliding with the onlookers.

Without a sound, Mrs. Cortlandt picked up her skirts and fled into the darkness, Kirk stumbling along behind her, both guiding themselves by instinct rather than sight.  At last she stopped out of breath, and he overtook her.

“You mustn’t run through these dark alleys,” he cried, sharply.  “You’ll break your neck.”  Half impatient at this hysterical behavior, he seized her by the arm.