Сердца трех / Hearts of Three

With the feeling that it was some unusual game, such as one might meet up with on the coast of Central America, he yielded, smilingly, scarcely knowing whether he followed voluntarily or was being dragged into the jungle by her impetuosity.

�Do as I do,’ she shot back at him over her shoulder, by this time leading him with one hand of hers in his.

He smiled and obeyed, crouching when she crouched, doubling over when she doubled, while memories of John Smith and Pocahontas[10 - John Smith and Pocahontas – по легенде, индейская девочка Покахонтас спасла английского капитана, которому угрожала смерть от рук индейцев.

] glimmered up in his fancy.

Abruptly she checked him and sat down, her hand directing him to sit beside her ere she released him, and pressed it to her heart while she panted:

�Thank God! Oh, merciful Virgin!’

In imitation, such having been her will of him, and such seeming to be the cue of the game, he smilingly pressed his own hand to his heart, although he called neither on God nor the Virgin.

�Won’t you ever be serious?’ she flashed at him, noting his action.

And Francis was immediately and profoundly, as well as naturally, serious.

�My dear lady…’ he began.

But an abrupt gesture checked him; and, with growing wonder, he watched her bend and listen, and heard the movement of bodies padding down some runway several yards away.

With a soft warm palm pressed commandingly to his to be silent, she left him with the abruptness that he had already come to consider as customary with her, and slipped away down the runway.

Almost he whistled with astonishment. He might have whistled if, had he not heard her voice, not distant, in Spanish, sharply interrogate men whose Spanish voices, half-humbly, half-insistently and half-rebelliously, answered her.

He heard them move on, still talking, and, after five minutes of dead silence, heard her call for him peremptorily to come out.

�Gee! I wonder what Regan would do under such circumstances!’ he smiled to himself as he obeyed.

He followed her, no longer hand in hand, through the jungle to the beach. When she paused, he came beside her and faced her, still under the impress of the fantasy which possessed him that it was a game.

�Tag![11 - Tag! – Ты водишь! (при игре в салки)]’ he laughed, touching her on the shoulder.