anda, with
iron-work covered with creepers, running halfway round the house from
window to window; and when he suggested to her that they might drink
their coffee on this veranda, she hailed the suggestion as a very happy
one. How did it come that none of the rest of the people had thought of
that? she wondered.

In another instant they were standing together at the space between the
windows outside, the long-leaved creepers mingling with the decorations
of her hat, and making a very effective background for his well-shaped
head.

For the next half-hour people were intermittently coming to one of the
windows, putting their heads out and then turning away, the girls with
gentle little pursings of the mouth and other forms that the sneer
feminine assumes; the men with winks and an occasional chuckle,
suggestive of an exchange of confidence too deep for words.

One woman had poked her head out--it was gray at the roots and golden
at the tips--and asked her companion in a voice that had a large
circumference where was Mrs. Linton.

Now, Herbert Courtland had not lived so long far from the busy haunts
of men (white) as to be utterly ignorant of the fact that no young woman
but one who is disposed to be quite friendly with a man, would adopt
such a suggestion as he had made to her, and spend half an hour drinking
half a cup of iced coffee by his side in that particular place. The
particular place might have accommodated six persons; but he knew, and
he knew that she knew also, that it was one of the unwritten laws of
good society that such particular places are overcrowded if occupied by
three persons. It was on this account the old men and maidens and the
young men and matrons--that is how they pair themselves nowadays--had
avoided the veranda so carefully, refusing to contribute to its
congestion as a place of resort.

Herbert Courtland could not but feel that Phyllis intended to be
friendly with him--even at the risk of being within audible distance of
the strong man who was fighting a duel _a outrance_ with a grand piano;
and as he desired to be on friendly terms with a girl in whom he was
greatly interested, he was very much pleased to find her showing no
disposition to return to the tea room, or any other room, until quite
half an hour had gone by very pleasantly. And then she did so with a
start: the start of a girl who suddenly remembers a duty--and regrets
it.

That had pleased him greatly; he felt it to be r