Remorse smote me that I had consented to engage this frail,
pink-and-ivory biped for an enterprise which lay outside the suburbs
of Manhattan. I glanced guiltily at my victim; she sat there, the
incarnation of New York piquancy--a translated denizen of the
metropolis--a slender spirit of the back offices of sky-scrapers. Why
had I lured her hither?--here where the heavy, lavender-tinted
breakers thundered on a lost coast; here where above the dune-jungles
vultures soared, and snowy-headed eagles, hulking along the sands,
tore dead fish and yelped at us as we passed.

Strange waters, strange skies--a strange, lost land aquiver under an
exotic sun; and there she sat with her wise eyes of a child,
unconcerned, watching the world in perfect confidence.

"May I pay a little compliment to your pluck?" I asked, amused.

"Certainly," she said, smiling as the maid of Manhattan alone knows
how to smile--shyly, inquiringly--with a lingering hint of laughter in
the curled lips' corners. Then her sensitive features fell a trifle.
"Not pluck," she said, "but necessity; I had no chance to choose, no
time to wait. My last dollar, Mr. Gilland, is in my purse!"

With a gay little gesture she drew it from her shirt-front, then,
smiling, sat turning it over and over in her lap.

The sun fell on her hands, gilding the smooth skin with the first tint
of sunburn. Under the corners of her eyes above the rounded cheeks a
pink stain lay like the first ripening flush on a wild strawberry.
That, too, was the mark left by the caress of wind and sun. I had had
no idea she was so pretty.