Flappers and Philosophers | Page 4

and opened it curiously.
"The Revolt of the Angels. Sounds pretty good. French, eh?" He stared
at her with new interest "You French?"
"No."
"What's your name?"
"Farnam."
"Farnam what?"
"Ardita Farnam."
"Well Ardita, no use standing up there and chewing out the insides of

your mouth. You ought to break those nervous habits while you're
young. Come over here and sit down."
Ardita took a carved jade case from her pocket, extracted a cigarette
and lit it with a conscious coolness, though she knew her hand was
trembling a little; then she crossed over with her supple, swinging walk,
and sitting down in the other settee blew a mouthful of smoke at the
awning.
"You can't get me off this yacht," she raid steadily; "and you haven't
got very much sense if you think you'll get far with it. My uncle'll have
wirelesses zigzagging all over this ocean by half past six."
"Hm."
She looked quickly at his face, caught anxiety stamped there plainly in
the faintest depression of the mouth's corners.
"It's all the same to me," she said, shrugging her shoulders. "'Tisn't my
yacht. I don't mind going for a coupla hours' cruise. I'll even lend you
that book so you'll have something to read on the revenue boat that
takes you up to Sing-Sing."
He laughed scornfully.
"If that's advice you needn't bother. This is part of a plan arranged
before I ever knew this yacht existed. If it hadn't been this one it'd have
been the next one we passed anchored along the coast."
"Who are you?" demanded Ardita suddenly. "And what are you?"
"You've decided not to go ashore?"
"I never even faintly considered it."
"We're generally known," he said "all seven of us, as Curtis Carlyle and
his Six Black Buddies late of the Winter Garden and the Midnight
Frolic."

"You're singers?"
"We were until to-day. At present, due to those white bags you see
there we're fugitives from justice and if the reward offered for our
capture hasn't by this time reached twenty thousand dollars I miss my
guess."
"What's in the bags?" asked Ardita curiously.
"Well," he said "for the present we'll call it--mud--Florida mud."

III
Within ten minutes after Curtis Carlyle's interview with a very
frightened engineer the yacht Narcissus was under way, steaming south
through a balmy tropical twilight. The little mulatto, Babe, who seems
to have Carlyle's implicit confidence, took full command of the
situation. Mr. Farnam's valet and the chef, the only members of the
crew on board except the engineer, having shown fight, were now
reconsidering, strapped securely to their bunks below. Trombone Mose,
the biggest negro, was set busy with a can of paint obliterating the
name Narcissus from the bow, and substituting the name Hula Hula,
and the others congregated aft and became intently involved in a game
of craps.
Having given order for a meal to be prepared and served on deck at
seven-thirty, Carlyle rejoined Ardita, and, sinking back into his settee,
half closed his eyes and fell into a state of profound abstraction.
Ardita scrutinized him carefully--and classed him immedialely as a
romantic figure. He gave the effect of towering self-confidence erected
on a slight foundation--just under the surface of each of his decisions
she discerned a hesitancy that was in decided contrast to the arrogant
curl of his lips.
"He's not like me," she thought "There's a difference somewhere."
Being a supreme egotist Ardita frequently thought about herself; never

having had her egotism disputed she did it entirely naturally and with
no detraction from her unquestioned charm. Though she was nineteen
she gave the effect of a high-spirited precocious child, and in the
present glow of her youth and beauty all the men and women she had
known were but driftwood on the ripples of her temperament. She had
met other egotists--in fact she found that selfish people bored her rather
less than unselfish people--but as yet there had not been one she had
not eventually defeated and brought to her feet.
But though she recognized an egotist in the settee, she felt none of that
usual shutting of doors in her mind which meant clearing ship for
action; on the contrary her instinct told her that this man was somehow
completely pregnable and quite defenseless. When Ardita defied
convention--and of late it had been her chief amusement--it was from
an intense desire to be herself, and she felt that this man, on the
contrary, was preoccupied with his own defiance.
She was much more interested in him than she was in her own situation,
which affected her as the prospect of a matineé might affect a
ten-year-old child. She had implicit confidence in her ability to take
care of herself under any and all circumstances.
The night deepened. A pale new