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the midst of a great uproar of all my friends and relatives because I did know what I wanted."
"What was it?"
"A man."
He started.
"You mean you were engaged?"
"After a fashion. If you hadn't come aboard I had every intention of slipping ashore yesterday evening--how
long ago it seems--and meeting him in Palm Beach. He's waiting there for me with a bracelet that once
belonged to Catharine of Russia. Now don't mutter anything about aristocracy," she put in quickly. "I liked
him simply because he had had an imagination and the utter courage of his convictions."
"But your family disapproved, eh?"
"What there is of it--only a silly uncle and a sillier aunt. It seems he got into some scandal with a red-haired
woman named Mimi something--it was frightfully exaggerated, he said, and men don't lie to me--and
anyway I didn't care what he'd done; it was the future that counted. And I'd see to that. When a man's in love
with me he doesn't care for other amusements. I told him to drop her like a hot cake, and he did."
"I feel rather jealous," said Carlyle, frowning--and then he laughed. "I guess I'll just keep you along with us
until we get to Callao. Then I'll lend you enough money to get back to the States. By that time you'll have had
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a chance to think that gentleman over a little more."
"Don't talk to me like that!" fired up Ardita. "I won't tolerate the parental attitude from anybody! Do you
understand me?"
He chuckled and then stopped, rather abashed, as her cold anger seemed to fold him about and chill him.
"I'm sorry," he offered uncertainly.
`Oh, don't apologize! I can't stand men who say `I'm sorry' in that manly, reserved tone. Just shut up!"
A pause ensued, a pause which Carlyle found rather awkward, but which Ardita seemed not to notice at all as
she sat contentedly enjoying her cigarette and gazing out at the shining sea. After a minute she crawled out on
the rock and lay with her face over the edge looking down. Carlyle, watching her, reflected how it seemed
impossible for her to assume an ungraceful attitude.
"Oh, look!" she cried. "There's a lot of sort of ledges down there. Wide ones of all different heights."
He joined her and together they gazed down the dizzy height.
"We'll go swimming to-night!" she said excitedly. "By moonlight."
"Wouldn't you rather go in at the beach on the other end?"
"Not a chance. I like to dive. You can use my uncle's bathing-suit, only it'll fit you like a gunny sack, because
he's a very flabby man. I've got a one-piece affair that's shocked the natives all along the Atlantic coast from
Biddeford Pool to St. Augustine."
"I suppose you're a shark."
"Yes, I'm pretty good. And I look cute too. A sculptor up at Rye last summer told me my calves were worth
five hundred dollars."
There didn't seem to be any answer to this, so Carlyle was silent, permitting himself only a discreet interior
smile.
V
When the night crept down in shadowy blue and silver they threaded the shimmering channel in the rowboat
and, tying it to a jutting rock, began climbing the cliff together. The first shelf was ten feet up, wide, and
furnishing a natural diving platform. There they sat down in the bright moonlight and watched the faint
incessant surge of the waters, almost stilled now as the tide set seaward.
"Are you happy?" he asked suddenly.
She nodded.
"Always happy near the sea. You know," she went on, "I've been thinking all day that you and I are
somewhat alike. We're both rebels--only for different reasons. Two years ago, when I was just eighteen, and
you were----"
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"Twenty-five."
"--well, we were both conventional successes. I was an utterly devastating débutante and you were a
prosperous musician just commissioned in the army----"
"Gentleman by act of Congress," he put in ironically.
"Well, at any rate, we both fitted. If our corners were not rubbed off they were at least pulled in. But deep in
us both was something that made us require more for happiness. I didn't know what I wanted. I went from
man to man, restless, impatient, month by month getting less acquiescent and more dissatisfied. I used to sit
sometimes chewing at the insides of my mouth and thinking I was going crazy--I had a frightful sense of
transiency. I wanted things now--now--now! Here I was-- beautiful--I am, aren't I?"
"Yes," agreed Carlyle tentatively.
Ardita rose suddenly.
"Wait a second. I want to try this delightful looking sea."
She walked to the end of the ledge and shot out over the sea, doubling up in mid-air and then straightening
out and entering the water straight as a blade in a perfect jack-knife dive.
In a minute her voice floated up to him.
"You see, I used to read all day and most of the night. I began to resent society----"
"Come on up here," he interrupted. "What on earth are you doing?"
"Just floating round on my back. I'll be up in a minute. Let me tell you. The only thing I enjoyed was
shocking people; wearing something quite impossible and quite charming to a fancy-dress party, going round
with the fastest men in New York, and getting into some of the most hellish scrapes imaginable."
The sounds of splashing mingled with her words, and then he heard her hurried breathing as she began
climbing up the side to the ledge.
"Go on in!" she called.
Obediently he rose and dived. When he emerged, dripping, and made the climb he found that she was no
longer on the ledge, but after a frightened second he heard her light laughter from another shelf ten feet up.
There he joined her and they both sat quietly for a moment, their arms clasped round their knees, panting a
little from the climb.
"The family were wild," she said suddenly. "They tried to marry me off. And then when I'd begun to feel that
after all life was scarcely worth living I found something"--her eyes went skyward exultantly--"I found
something!"
Carlyle waited and her words came with a rush.
"Courage--just that; courage as a rule of life, and something to cling to always. I began to build up this
enormous faith in myself. I began to see that in all my idols in the past some manifestation
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of courage had unconsciously been the thing that attracted me. I began separating courage from the other
things of life. All sorts of courage--the beaten, bloody prize-fighter coming up for more--I used to make
men take me to prize-fights; the déclassé woman sailing through a nest of cats and looking at them as if they
were mud under her feet; the liking what you like always; the utter disregard for other people's
opinions--just to live as I liked always and to die in my own way--Did you bring up the cigarettes?"
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