“Well, it wasn’t pearls. It was this fine cigarette lighter instead. Matches the one he gave my older brother, Barnard—Barnie’s from his first marriage, you understand, the heir apparent—on his sixteenth birthday, except Barnie’s is gold, not silver. Nice inscription, though.” I’d been flicking the lighter on and off while I spoke, and now I held it up, so the fellow could make out the words engraved on the side, in the glow from the hotel and the falling moon. “Go ahead. Read it out loud,” I said.

He cleared his throat. “To Lulu on her birthday. SBL. That’s all?”

“Touching, isn’t it?”

There was no movement from the man beside me, no sound at all. He seemed to have forgotten I was there. The seagulls were circling again, calling out in lazy screams, the way everything here moved and spoke at a measured pace, if it moved and spoke at all, the exact opposite of New York City.

I tucked the lighter back into my satin purse, where it clinked against the camera. Hog Island floated before us, outlined by the moon. “Tell me again about botany.”

“Botany?”

“That is what you’re studying, isn’t it? Botany?”

“Yes, it is. I’ve spent the last year or so cataloging the native flora. Fascinating work.”

I turned toward him and leaned back, propping my elbow in the sand. “You do realize there’s a war on?”

He had one leg crossed over the other, and his right hand rested lightly on his knee. He stared ahead at the flickering harbor, the gilded shore of Hog Island, the sail disappearing to the east. His spectacles glinted. “My eyesight, remember? The army wouldn’t have me.”

“What a shame.”

“Rather than sit behind some damned desk somewhere, I thought I might better serve my country by coming here.”

“Oh, indeed. Where else than a tropical paradise?”

Now he turned to me, smiling. “Why, Mrs. Randolph, don’t you know what treasures lie undiscovered around us, in the natural world? Think of penicillin. If our side can find a way to mass-produce the stuff, the war will be over in months.”

“How so?”

“Because a vast percentage of wounded men end up dying of sepsis and other infections, Mrs. Randolph. And it seems—well, to me, at any rate—considerably more pleasant to find a way to win this war by discovering new ways to save soldiers’ lives, rather than discovering new ways to kill them.” He stopped, ran a hand through his hair, and grinned again. “My God, did you ever hear such a pompous ass?”

“I’ve heard worse.”

He reached to his right and pulled a bottle free from the sand. “Nicked this from the bar,” he said.

“Champagne! Why didn’t you say anything?”

“Because I didn’t want you to fall in love with me for all the wrong reasons.”

“Did you bring glasses too?”

“Naturally.”