f them all. He not only
grew handsomer, he grew younger; a magnificent, towering, copper-colored
monolith of a man, whose gray eyes were as clear as mountain springs,
whose white teeth turned his smile to a flash of light. Constantly they
patrolled the beach, pairs of them, studying the ocean for sight of a
distant sail, selecting at intervals a new spot on which at night to
start fires, or by day to erect signals. They bubbled with spirits.
They laughed and talked without cessation. The condition which Ralph
Addington had deplored, the absence of women, made first for social
relaxation, for psychological rest.

"Lord, I never noticed before--until I got this chance to get off and
think of it--what a damned bother women are," Honey Smith said one day.
"Of all the sexes that roam the earth, as George Ade says, I like
them least. What a mess they make of your time and your work, always
requiring so much attention, always having to be waited on, always
dropping things, always so much foolish fuss and ceremony, always asking
such footless questions and never hearing you when you answer them.
Never really knowing anything or saying anything. They're a different
kind of critter, that's all there is to it; they're amateurs at life.
They're a failure as a sex and an outworn convention anyway. Myself, I'm
for sending them to the scrap-heap. Votes for men!"

And with this, according to the divagations of their temperaments and
characters, the others strenuously concurred.

Their days, crowded to the brim with work, passed so swiftly that they
scarcely noticed their flight. Their nights, filled with a sleep that
was twin brother to Death, seemed not to exist at all.

Their evenings were lively with the most brilliant kind of man-talk.
To it, Frank Merrill brought his encyclopedic book knowledge, his
insatiable curiosity about life; Ralph Addington all the garnered
richness of his acute observation; Billy Fairfax his acquaintance with
the elect of the society or of the art world, his quiet, deferential
attitude of listener. But the events of these conversational orgies were
Honey Smith's adventures and Pete Murphy's romances. Honey's narrative
was crisp, clear, quick, straight from the shoulder, colloquial, slangy.
He dealt often in the first person and the present tense. He told a
plain tale from its simple beginning to its simple end. But Pete--. His
language had all Honey's simplicity lined terseness and, in addition,
he had