"But I know a bench off to the right, where it isn't likely you'll
be found by any questing partner, and you needn't confess to having
had a companion. Will you come and talk to me?"
"I'm a bird of passage," she answered, smiling, "and I've only to
unfold my wings and fly away from the smoke of scandal. Yes, I'll
come--if you won't talk--too much. You see, after all, I won't
flatter you. It's the night I want, not talk ... the wonderful night!"
But, of course, they did talk. She was an American girl, she told him,
and had studied art a little, but would never be much of a painter.
She had been teaching classes in a city high school in the Middle
West, when suddenly life there seemed to have gone humdrum and stale.
She had a little money saved, not much, but enough if she managed
well, and she'd boldly resigned and determined, once at least before
she was too old, to follow spring around the world. She had almost
given up the idea of painting now, but thought presently she might
go in for writing, where, after all, perhaps, her real talent lay.
She had gotten a letter of introduction in Suva to the Tretheways
and she would be here until the next steamer after the morrow's.
These were the bare facts.
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