“Just the same old, wasn’t it? Daddy throws a party for his poor little rich girl, society swoons.”

He dropped into the sand. Not so close as to touch me but close enough that I felt his warmth and smelled his skin. I held out the cigarette. He took it from my fingers and returned it a moment later. I opened my eyes. In my other hand lay the cigarette lighter, clenched in my palm. I curled the fingers outward, and the metal caught some light from the moon.

“Handsome object,” said Thorpe.

“This?” I held up the lighter. “My father gave it to me when I was sixteen.”

“Sixteen?”

“He’s not your ordinary kind of father.”

A solemn pause. “I see.”

From behind us came a crash of splintering glass. We flinched at exactly the same instant, to exactly the same degree, while a roar of laughter followed. I looked over my shoulder just as he looked over his shoulder, and our eyes met, a flash, a jolt. I turned back to the harbor.

“Aren’t you going to ask?” I said.

“Ask what?”

“About my father. The lighter. It’s a good story.”

“I wouldn’t dream of prying.”

“Naturally. You’re English, aren’t you?”

“Half English. Well, a quarter, really. My grandmother’s a resolute Scot.”

“What’s the other half?”

“German.”

“Is that so?”

“That’s so.”

“Well, your secret’s safe with me.” I toed a little sand. “Still, it’s a good story, if you want to hear it.”

“I daresay it must be.”

I blew out a ribbon of smoke. “The magazine, the one I write for? And that’s a secret, by the way. Nobody’s supposed to know the identity of the Lady of Nassau.”

“Madam, I am the soul of discretion.”

“I know you are. That’s why I’m blabbing to you now. I mean, a girl’s got to confess once in a while, and you’re the nearest thing I know to a priest.”

“Honored, I’m sure.”

“You should be. That’s the highest praise I can give a fellow. Anyway, my father’s the publisher.”

“Of the Metropolitan?”

“That’s the one. My mother was his second wife, sort of sandwiched, if that’s the word, between the Fifth Avenue debutante and the Austrian countess.”

Thorpe took my cigarette again. “How cosmopolitan.”

“Well, you’ve got a right, haven’t you, when you’re S. Barnard Lightfoot Junior, publishing scion and man-about-Manhattan. You’ve got the wherewithal to meet and marry whatever girl takes your fancy. Whatever girl suits you at any particular moment in your life.”

There was this silence, delicate and smoke scented, while the noise of the party went on behind us. I waited for Thorpe to shift in his seat, to edge away, to make some excuse and rise and leave me alone.

Instead, he made another pull on the cigarette and said, “Well, go on.”