"You've grown unbearable! Your disposition---"

"You've made me that way! No child ever has a bad disposition
unless it's her fancy's fault! Whatever I am, you did it."

Muttering something under his breath her uncle turned and,
walking forward called in a loud voice for the launch. Then he
returned to the awning, where Ardita had again seated herself and
resumed her attention to the lemon.

"I am going ashore," he said slowly. "I will be out again at nine
o'clock to-night. When I return we start back to New York,
wither I shall turn you over to your aunt for the rest of your
natural, or rather unnatural, life." He paused and looked at
her, and then all at once something in the utter childness of her
beauty seemed to puncture his anger like an inflated tire, and
render him helpless, uncertain, utterly fatuous.

"Ardita," he said not unkindly, "I'm no fool. I've been round. I
know men. And, child, confirmed libertines don't reform until
they're tired--and then they're not themselves--they're husks of
themselves." He looked at her as if expecting agreement, but
receiving no sight or sound of it he continued. "Perhaps the man
loves you--that's possible. He's loved many women and he'll love
many more. Less than a month ago, one month, Ardita, he was
involved in a notorious affair with that red-haired woman, Mimi
Merril; promised to give her the diamond bracelet that the Czar
of Russia gave his mother. You know--you read the papers."