epair. The contact of
my fingers had left me vibrating, and as I bent my face over the chain,
my hands were trembling.

"Why," she demanded in a soft voice, leaning back and clasping her hands
behind her head, "won't you tell me the story of your island?" Into the
question crept a teasing note of whimsical insistence.

"Because," I answered, "there is a part of it which I couldn't tell
you--and without that there is nothing to tell."

"Will you tell me some other time when you know me better?" she inquired
as naively as a little girl, pleading for a favorite fairy tale.

At every turn she flashed a new angle of herself to view. At one moment
she was impressively regal, at the next an appealing, coaxing child; at
one instant her eyes hinted at heart-hunger and at the next her lips
knew no curves but those of laughter.

And yet there was a thing about it all that hurt and disappointed me.
With nothing tangible, there was still, in a subtle way, much which was
sheer coquetry of eye and lip. It was invitation. Why did she challenge
me to forbidden things so easy to say, so impossible to unsay? She must
know that from the moment I saw her I had stood at a crisis; and that
this was true only because I loved her. Such things need no words for
their telling.

"I'm afraid I shall be denied the privilege of knowing you better," I
said slowly, "I leave for the mountains to-morrow morning."

"You won't be there forever," she retorted, "sha'n't we see you on the
return trip?"

I shook my head.

"I must hurry back East."

"I'm sorry," she answered with sweet graciousness. Any woman in the
country houses about her would probably have spoken in the same fashion,
but to me it was a match touched to powder.

"I will quote you a parable," I said, and although I attempted to smile,
that the speech might be taken lightly, I had that rigid feeling about
the lips and brow which made me conscious that my face was drawn and
tell-tale.

"Icarus was the original bird-man, and he came to grief. His wings were
fastened on with wax, but they worked fairly well until he soared too
close to the sun. Then they melted ... and the first aviation disaster
was chronicled."

She looked at me frankly and level-eyed, but her face held only
mystification.

"I'm afraid," she said, "you must construe the parable."

I shook my head gravely. "I'm glad you don't take its meaning."

"I don't understand," she repeated, yet we both felt that we we