She said exultantly: "I knew it, Mr. Smith! I was certain that you are the living embodiment of your own heroes! The moment I set eyes on you playing in the sand with your lead soldiers, I was sure of it!"
Thrilled, she considered him, her soft eyes brilliant with undisguised admiration.
"I wish I could actually _see_ it!" she said under her breath.
"See you, in real life, as one of your own heroes--doing some of the things they do so cleverly, so winningly--careless of convention, reckless of consequences, oblivious to all considerations except only the affair in hand. That," she said excitedly, "would be glorious, and well worth a trip to the States!"
"How far," he asked, "have you read in that book of mine?"
"In this book?" She opened it, impulsively, ran over the pages, hesitated, stopped.
"He was--was kissing the Balkan Princess," she said. "I left them--_in statu quo_."
"I think he did it--very--thoroughly, Mr. Smith."
"It ought to be done thoroughly if done at all," he said reflectively.
"Otherwise," she nodded, "it would be offensive."
"No, I don't know. A nice girl can not imagine herself being kissed--except under very extraordinary circumstances, and by a very extraordinary man.... Such a man as you have drawn in this book."
"Had you been that Balkan Princess, what would you have done?" he asked, rather pale.
She sat considering, blue eyes lost in candid reverie. Then the faintest smile curved her lips; she looked up at Smith with winning simplicity.
"In your story, Mr. Smith, does the Balkan Princess return his kiss?"
"I think I would have returned it--in that--chapter." Then, for the first time, she blushed.
The naïve avowal set the heart and intellect of Mr. Smith afire. But he only dropped his well-shaped head and didn't look at her. Which was rather nice of him.
"Romance," he said after a moment or two, "is all well enough. But real life is stranger than fiction."
"Not in the British Isles," she said with decision. "It _is_ tea and curates and kennels and stables--as our writers depict it."
"No, you are mistaken! Everywhere it is stranger than fiction," he insisted--"more surprising, more charming, more wonderful. Even here in America--here in Florida--here on this tiny point of sand jutting into the Atlantic, life is more beautiful, more miraculous than any fiction ever written."