with me,
Becky--and let these people go."

"It isn't proper for a hostess to leave her guests."

"Are you trying to--punish me?"

"For what?"

So--she too was playing----! She had let him come that he might see
her--indifferent.

Becky had danced with George once, and with Randy three times. George
had protested, and Becky had said, "But I promised him before you
came----"

"You knew I was coming?"

"Yes."

"You might have kept a few----"

She seemed to consider that. "Yes, I might. But not from Randy----"

At last he said to her, "I have been out in the garden. There is a star
shining in the little pool where the fishes are. I want you to see the
star."

It was thus he had won her. He had always seen stars shining in little
pools, or a young moon rising from a rosy bed. But it had never meant
anything. She shook her head. "I should like to see your little star.
But I haven't time."

"Are you afraid to come?"

"Why should I be?"

"Well, there's Love--in the garden," he was daring--his sparkling eyes
tried to hold hers and failed.

She was looking straight beyond him to where Randy stood by a window,
tall and thin with his Indian profile, and his high-held head.

"We are going to have watermelons in a minute," was her romantic
response to Dalton's fire. "You'd better stay and eat some."

"I don't want to eat. And if you aren't afraid you'll come."

Calvin and Mandy and their son, John, with Flippins' Daisy, had
assembled the watermelons on a long table out-of-doors. Above the table
on the branch of a tree was hung an old ship's lantern brought by
Admiral Meredith to his friend, the Judge. It gave a faint but steady
light, and showed the pink and green and white of the fruit, the dusky
faces of the servants as they cut and sliced, and handed plates to the
eager and waiting guests.

Becky, standing back in the shadows with Randy by her side, watched the
men surge towards the table, and retire with their loads of
lusciousness. Grinning boys were up to their ears in juice, girls,
bare-armed and bare-necked, reached for plates held teasingly aloft. It
was all rather innocently bacchanal--a picture which for Becky had an
absolutely impersonal quality. She had entertained her guests as she had
eaten her dinner, outwardly doing the normal and conventional thing,
while her mind was chaotic. This jumble of people on the lawn seemed
unreal and detached. The only real people in the world were herself and