"Did you bring my wrap,—the gray velvet?"

The man addressed slightly raised his arm to draw attention to the fact that he was carrying a garment.

"Oh, thanks. Is there anywhere to go this morning?"

"I thought we were to sit somewhere in the old fort. You signified a wish to that effect."

"Did I? If I've signified a wish, do let's carry it into effect. We will sit on the water-battery, then; though I've noticed that only lovers sit there."

The man made no reply. The two walked across the Plaza, mounted the sea-wall, and were presently established on the battery, apparently absorbed in gazing across the Matanzas River out towards the open sea.

"Shall we play we are lovers?" asked Prudence, after awhile, turning to her husband with a smile. "I'm afraid the attempt will be too great a strain upon you," answered Lawrence; but he smiled back, and leaned a trifle nearer his companion.

She turned her eyes away immediately, and seemed to drop the idea of playing at lovers.

Lawrence's figure stiffened slightly as it withdrew; but he said nothing until he took a cigar-case from his pocket. Then he remarked:

"I'm so glad you don't object to smoking."

"But it seems coarse to go beyond cigarettes," she answered.

"Does it? Then you are not coarse yet."

"Thank fortune, no. I wonder if Leander has learned to chew tobacco."

No reply. Lawrence smoked slowly, gazing intently at a large yacht that was just entering the river.

"Four months is a tremendous while, isn't it?" Prudence put up her hand to yawn behind it as she spoke.

"That depends," said Lawrence, gravely.

"On what, for instance?"

"On the degree in which you are bored."

"Ah! Well, there's something in that, Rodney. But tell me truly, how long does it seem to you since we were married?" "Precisely four months and three days and a half."

"You are nothing if not accurate, dear."

She put up her hand and yawned again.

"Accuracy is something," he returned.

He was holding his cigar in his hand now, and looking down at the red tip with the utmost apparent interest.

After a short silence, Prudence said, "I wish you happened to have a cigarette about you, Rodney."

"I have. Your case is in my pocket."

She held out her hand. "Give me one, then. I didn't know this water-battery was so deadly dull."

Lawrence made no movement to accede to her demand. He flung away his own half-burnt cigar.

"Give me one, please."

"No. I prefer that you shouldn't smoke here in public."

"Oh!"

Her eyes narrowed as she looked at her husband; then she burst into a light laugh, and turned to look again at the river. Lawrence glanced at her, then he, too, gazed at the water.

A little shallop shot into sight close to the battery. It was rowed by a man who looked up and saw the two. He lifted his cap; he stared persistently at the woman, his eyes showing an open admiration. Then his boat glided on towards the wharves.

"Is that Meramble?"

"Yes; quite an Italianized-looking man, isn't he?"

There was a slight access of color on Lawrence's face, but his voice was perfectly even in its lightness, as he responded:

"Was that an Italianized stare he gave you?"

Prudence shrugged her shoulders; and that was the only reply she made to the question.

More boats and more yachts came by. Sometimes there was waving of hats and handkerchiefs from those on board to the two on the battery.

"We must look quite a Darby and Joan," remarked Prudence.

"Quite," said Lawrence.

Again Prudence turned her eyes quickly on her husband. Then she asked:

"Do you remember what Mr. Meramble sang at the Ormistons' last night?"

"No."

"I do; it was so cute. You were close to the piano; you ought to remember."

"I recall Mr. Meramble's shirt-collar and his tie, but not his song." As he spoke, Lawrence laughed. It must be confessed that his laugh was extremely irritating.

"Listen," said Prudence.

Then, in a veiled, sweet voice, she sang:

Lawrence sat so motionless that he almost had an air of rigidity. He continued his straight-ahead stare as he remarked, in an indifferent voice, "Meramble looks like a man who would not only sing like that, but act like that."

Prudence did not speak for some moments. Then she said she wondered why men seemed to hate each other so; she never could understand it.

"Then what you have not understood may be beyond your comprehension altogether."

Here Lawrence drew out another cigar, contemplated it, and then returned it to its case.

"How pleasant the water-battery is!" exclaimed Prudence.

"Perfectly delightful," was the man's response.

Another silence. Then Prudence turned with an indescribable, confiding movement towards her husband. She slowly removed her glove, looking down at it as she did so. She gently and caressingly laid her bared hand in her husband's, which was lying listlessly on his knee. The masculine fingers closed quickly about the feminine ones.

But Lawrence did not yet turn his head. He knew that Prudence had moved imperceptibly nearer. Presently he heard a soft whisper, "Dearest."

He turned now, and his eyes met a warm glance that was even more thrilling than the word had been.

A fire sprang instantly to his eyes as he murmured:

"My darling! My darling wife!"

She responded to the eager pressure of his hand, the eager brilliance of his eyes. Then she said, with tender gaiety, "It isn't so stupid on the water-battery, after all, is it?"

"How can it be stupid where you are?"

"Oh, thank you! That's just what I intended you should say, Lawrence. It's so nice not to have you disappoint me."

Here the two smiled into each other's eyes; and then Prudence added, "You are never dull, you dear old fellow, only when you choose to be. That's why it's so very, very trying, you know." "But I don't want to try you," Lawrence responded.

"Perhaps it's just because you're a man, dear," she said lightly, but still with the sweet warm look in her eyes.

"Then I fear I can't help it if the trouble is so deep-seated as that." There was an ardent strain below the lightness in his voice. "Prue," he added, in a half whisper, laughing slightly, "if we were not on the water-battery I'm almost certain I should kiss you."

"On the Plaza, for instance?" she asked, with a raising of the brows. "I suppose we look quite ridiculous, as it is. Please throw my mantle over our hands; that is, if you insist on keeping my hand in yours."

Lawrence flung the gray wrap over their clasped hands. He began to talk gaily. Suddenly he ceased speaking. Group after group had gone past them as they sat there, but now a man in white pantaloons, with a blue coat over a white rowing jersey, came walking over the battery. This man was middle-aged, swarthy, with a heavy black, carefully kept beard, and black eyes with a puffiness beneath them. He came up hat in hand.

"Of course I know I'm de trop, Mrs. Lawrence," he said, easily; "but then a man may decide to be even that for the sake of a word with you."

He nodded at Lawrence, who bowed with extreme distance in return, and who altogether had a look, as his wife informed him later, of wishing to rise and throw this newcomer into the sea.

"Only you'd have had a terrible armful, dear," she concluded, with a laugh and a glint of the eyes.

Having spoken thus, Mr. Meramble calmly sat down on the other side of Mrs. Lawrence and asked her if she didn't think he had rowed by in excellent form. Whereupon they entered into a brisk talk about rowing and yacht-racing and kindred topics.

Lawrence grew more and more glum, and at last rose and said he believed he would go back to the Ponce.

To his surprise, Prudence also rose.

"Wait a moment, dear," she said, sweetly, "and I'll go with you."

And of course Meramble rose, and refrained from accompanying them.

"I wish you were not quite such a donkey, Rodney," said Prudence, as the two walked away.

"Thanks for your good wish." Lawrence had a sense of suffocation upon him. This sense was caused by his now having fully decided in his own mind that his wife used just such tones and just such glances with other men as she had used—nay, as she still used—with him. This conviction, he felt, was reached rather soon after his marriage, and he was in the first acute suffering of the full discovery which had been slowly, like a dull pain, coming to his consciousness.

"I don't mean that you are habitually a donkey," she went on, as they strolled through the Plaza, "but only occasionally, and, of course, just when you particularly ought not to be."

Here the speaker bowed to an acquaintance, and Lawrence hurriedly raised his hat without seeing whom they had met.

"Just now," she continued, "you ought to have been especially sweet to Mr. Meramble."

"Why? Because the creature is a blackguard and a male flirt?"

Prudence raised her brows again. But she touched her husband's sleeve, and her glance tried to meet his.

"Because," she answered, "he is one of those animals who like to make husbands jealous."

Lawrence turned towards his wife with a restrained ferocity. "And you would let him?" he asked, speaking in a whisper lest he should speak too loud.

Prudence threw back her head and laughed; the merry sound made people near turn and look at her.

"Good heavens!" muttered Lawrence under his breath, "what a thing it is to be a woman!"

"Not half so much of a thing as it is to be a man. A man is a miracle of suspicion and trust, of belief and incredulity. Don't you believe me, you angry old Rodney?" she asked, with another touch on his arm, and a swift, sweet modulation of voice.

"Yes," he answered, grimly; "I believe everything you tell me."

"Oh, no, you mustn't do that, for soon you'll be blaming me for deceiving you. But we're getting off the subject,—Mr. Meramble. He likes to make you jealous. It is kind of exciting, you know, to suspect that some one is behind a door, or somewhere, fuming and biting his nails down to the quick; you've noticed that jealous people always bite their nails to the quick, haven't you?"

"I can't say I have."

"Well, they do; I suppose they enjoy it. Now about Mr. Meramble; have you anything special against him, Rodney dear?"

"Yes." "What?"

"Do you want it in plain words?"

"Oh, dear, yes. I'm not afraid of plain words; and really I'm getting interested in him."

"Are you? The plain words are that he is a gambler and a seducer of women."

"Oh! And perhaps he smokes, too?"

The words left the smiling lips with a flippancy that seemed to Rodney nothing less than atrocious.

And yet he could not help hoping that she was saying them only to shock him. He had often thought of late that she liked to shock him; he could not understand such amusement, however.

"We won't talk any more here in public on this subject," Lawrence said, when he believed he could speak in his ordinary tone; "if we wish to exhaust the topic, let us go back to the hotel."

"Very well; and perhaps you'll have me whipped if I don't agree with you. I heard of a man the other day who said it was only cowardice on his part that he didn't whip his wife."

To this remark Lawrence made no reply. The two were walking now towards the Ponce. Unconsciously Lawrence hastened his steps.

When the door had closed upon them in their own apartments, Prudence suddenly turned to her husband, flung her arms about his neck, and pressed her head against his breast. She sobbed; she clung to him as if she could never let him go; and when he sat down with her held close in his arms, she lifted her tear-wet face, put a hand under his chin, and held his face away while she looked long and tenderly into his eyes.

How could he have been so angry? How could he ever forget for a moment the look he saw on her face now?

These were the questions he was asking himself, while his heart beat with the old rapture, the old intensity of joy in her presence.

"You ought not to be cruel to me," she murmured, after awhile. Then, with a long, quivering breath, her head sank on his shoulder, and the two sat silent.

At last Lawrence became aware that his wife had fallen asleep. He looked down at her with inexpressible tenderness. He lightly kissed her forehead. He was already telling himself that he had been harsh, brutal. Was she never to speak to any one save him?

But, though he thought thus, though the burden in his arms was so unutterably dear to him, he had a conviction that he should not be able to refrain from returning to the subject of Meramble. Things were not yet satisfactorily settled. Lawrence could not understand how any self-respecting man could be willing that any of his womankind should be more than barely civil to a person like Meramble. Even women here in St. Augustine, who skimmed very near the fence that separated the respectable from those that were not respectable, stopped at Meramble. Some of them looked over the fence longingly, for Meramble was said to be mysteriously entertaining, and charmingly devoted when he chose to be so. And there was about his appearance something that seemed a cross between a man of the world and a bandit. And he could sing; why, those who had heard him averred that even Mario could never have so "charmed with a tenor note the souls in purgatory" as could this man.

Still, Meramble was "in society" and yet was only tolerated. The stories about him perhaps made him more interesting, while they made people afraid. The men nodded distantly at him; what friends he found were women who would not be thought intimate with him, but who would not cut him dead, on "account of his brigand face," their husbands said.

It may be permitted to remark here that the time when a man thinks he has been "harsh and brutal" is the time when his wife can most easily "twist him about her finger."

When Prudence woke, ten minutes later, she found Lawrence sitting motionless lest he should disturb her. She opened her eyes and gazed sleepily at him for an instant. Then she smiled and nestled still nearer to him.

"You dear old thing," she said, in a whisper, "you must be aching in every bone. You may move now."

Lawrence changed his position slightly, but still held her.

"There's one thing I want to ask," he said, presently.

Prudence raised her head. "Oh, dear!" she exclaimed, with a smile, "when a person wants to ask one thing it's sure to be something dreadful."

She began to stroke her husband's face. Lawrence took her hand and held it fast.

"Nevertheless, I must ask it," he said.

"Well," she said, resignedly, "go on."

She lay looking at him with soft shining eyes, her lips curved in something far sweeter than a smile.

"Are you going to be cruel to me?" she asked. "Was I ever cruel?"

"No, no, dear old boy. Now go on."

At this moment it seemed really ridiculous to Lawrence to ask what he had in mind to ask. But he kept to his resolve.

"I want you to promise not to—well, promise to snub that Meramble. Don't be any more than barely civil to him. You know what I mean. It's pollution for a woman to be kind to such a man."

Prudence raised her head and laughed.

"Is that all?" she said. "Ask me something harder than that. What do I care for Mr. Meramble? Pshaw! I can give you that promise easily enough."

"Oh, you will, then?" he asked, eagerly.

"Certainly."

And upon this Lawrence was afraid he had been a silly tyrant. But he now inquired why, then, Prudence smiled on that confounded scamp.

"Smiled on him?" she inquired, in bewilderment.

"Yes; in a—well, in a peculiar way, calculated to make him think you cared for him—or would like him to care for you—or—oh, no matter what. Stop smiling on him, anyway."

Here Lawrence tried to laugh. He felt awkward and foolish. Prudence rose. She knelt down in front of her husband and crossed her arms over her bosom.

"My lord," she said, in a low voice, "your will is my law. So be it, even as you have said. I will smile no more on that Meramble man person. And if your slave does not obey, cut off her head; then she will smile no more on any one."

Lawrence leaned forward and caught his wife back in his arms.

His spirits suddenly rose wildly, and they kept at this high tide for several days. Prudence was as she had been immediately before and after their marriage, passionately in love with him, gay, saucy, tender, caressing.

Therefore he was somewhat surprised that, when he came home from Jacksonville one morning, he should meet an acquaintance who should say:

"You've missed the excursion down to Matanzas, Lawrence."

"Yes, but I meant to miss it," was the reponse.

Afterward Lawrence remembered that the man looked at him with some curiosity as he remarked, carelessly:

"Mrs. Lawrence likes such junketings better than we do. She's gone in Meramble's launch." "Yes," Lawrence heard himself saying, carelessly, "she's always happy in a boat. How did the tennis match come out? Eustace won, of course?"

Then Lawrence walked slowly from the station by this man's side, and put questions about the tennis match, and seemed interested in the lengthy replies. But when he was at last left alone he strode eagerly down to the wharves. He knew there was no regular conveyance to Matanzas, but as he felt now he would go if he had to walk or swim there. He would not try to analyze or subdue the fury in his heart. It was not that he was jealous in the ordinary sense of the word. But that broken promise gave him a poignant and terrible sense of desecration.

As he asked here and there at the wharves for a sailboat, he could hardly bring himself to listen to the replies because of the agony of humiliation that overwhelmed him. He recalled with piercing vividness every look and tone as his wife had given the promise. What had she meant? And did she love him? Impossible to doubt it; and yet—The sting of that "yet" was unbearable.

He found a small sailboat which he could hire. The wind was just right, and he started. It seemed to him that he did not look to the right or left as his boat glided down between the Florida bank and the shore of Anastasia Island. The soft air was sweet with the smells of pine woods and salt water. The white gulls flew over him; the marsh ponies galloped up to the brink of the river to look at him, then as he came nearer they snorted and galloped away again, mane and tail flying.

It was several hours before his craft sailed up to the rickety old wharf near the ruin of the Spanish fort.

Two or three people were strolling on the beach, poking the fiddler-crabs with canes, or looking idly off about them.

"Hullo, Lawrence; so you decided you'd come, after all, eh?"

"Yes; thought better of it when I found I got back from Jacksonville in time."

Lawrence would not ask concerning his wife. A burning pain seemed to have seized his heart. He had not eaten since morning, and then but a few morsels of food. He was obliged to battle against a certain tremor of the limbs that sometimes came upon him. He walked along among the fiddler-crabs that were everywhere darting into their holes and then coming out again. He examined these crabs as if they were of the greatest interest to him. He talked a great deal with the people he met. Two or three of them spoke afterwards of his appearance, and some averred that there was a peculiar expression in his eyes. But there are people who make use of such phrases after a thing has happened.