The soft, scented breath of the jungle outside crooned a little through
the rustle of palm and fern fronds, just now and then audible; and
it stirred the mats at the windows and sometimes made the doors creak
hauntingly on their jungle-vine hinges.
“What’s today?” asked King, lighting a cigarette. And he added, with a
faint note of restlessness behind the laugh: “Already it’s beginning not
to matter much!”
Stella glanced at the calendar gayly. “Today is Thursday—the fourteenth.”
Then, clasping her hands with some excitement, she exclaimed: “Why, isn’t
that St. Valentine’s Day?”
“By Jove, you’re right, Stella.”
She seemed quite delighted over the discovery, though it was with a
trace of seriousness she mused: “_Doesn’t_ it seem strange to think of
Valentine’s Day with nobody but ourselves within hundreds of miles who
ever heard of St. Valentine?”
She glanced around her at the primitive surroundings. A great, lustrous
butterfly with heavy wings alighted on one of the sills and drooped
there, poised.
King looked at his wife with half quizzical amusement. “Can’t we
celebrate some way, even so?”
“Oh, yes—let’s!” she cried, eager to make the most of an unexpected fête
day.
“I simply must step around to the florist’s and order you some orchids.
Shall I, little girl?”
“Please do!” she laughed. “I’m sure you’ll find orchids in abundance just
now—and so cheap! Really yours for the picking!”
“You must admit,” he reminded her, “that living in a jungle possesses
some advantages.”
“Yes, even if not quite all the comforts of home!”
She liked these little flashes of “repartee,” for they always carried
her back to the wonderful night at the ball; yet in the midst of it,
oddly enough, she remembered the frilled paper-lace valentine Jerome had
sent her a year ago. She had found it, thick with cupids, tied to the
doorknob; and it had proved really the beginning of their dull little
courtship. “Poor Jerome,” she thought, “would have to do the conventional
thing. Such magnificence as orchids....”
King held out his arms romantically, and she ran to him. His look was at
once dazzling and tender.
“Give me a kiss, little girl!”
She raised her face happily.
“Now another.”
“Oh, Ferd—I never dreamed of being so happy!”
“Let me steal one on the tip of your nose,” he requested. “There!”
She laughed softly, and he asked: “How much do you love me, lady-bird?”
Could any one doubt he had fallen in love with her as he might fall in
love with Irmengarde?