sea we rush around to her house and propose. It’s nicer to be rejected by Mrs. Conant than it is to be drowned. And they say drowning is a delightful sensation.”
“Many like her here?” asked Merriam.
“Not anywhere,” said Bibb, with a comfortable sigh. “She’s the only white woman in La Paz. The rest range from a dappled dun to the colour of a b-flat piano key. She’s been here a year. Comes from—well, you know how a woman can talk—ask ’em to say ‘string’ and they’ll say ‘crow’s foot’ or ‘cat’s cradle.’ Sometimes you’d think she was from Oshkosh, and again from Jacksonville, Florida, and the next day from Cape Cod.”
“Mystery?” ventured Merriam.
“M—well, she looks it; but her talk’s translucent enough. But that’s a woman. I suppose if the Sphinx were to begin talking she’d merely say: ‘Goodness me! more visitors coming for dinner, and nothing to eat but the sand which is here.’ But you won’t think about that when you meet her, Merriam. You’ll propose to her too.”
To make a hard story soft, Merriam did meet her and propose to her. He found her to be a woman in black with hair the colour of a bronze turkey’s wings, and mysterious, remembering eyes that—well, that looked as if she might have been a trained nurse looking on when Eve was created. Her words and manner, though, were translucent, as Bibb had said. She spoke, vaguely, of friends in California and some of the lower parishes in
