"The Lord alone knows," I replied, grimly. "Are you repenting of your
bargain?"

"I am quite happy," she said, serenely.

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.