aye?'

'Oh, yes, I was in love with her--when I was ten.'

'Till you were...?'

'Till I was...?'

'How long did it take you to get over it, I mean?'

'I don't know. It wore away gradually. The tooth of time.'

'You're not at all in love with her any more?'

'After twenty years? And she a Queen? I hope I know my place.'

'But if you were to meet her again?'

'I should probably suffer a horrible disillusion.'

'But you have found, at any rate, that "first love is best"?'

'First and last. The last shall be first,' he said oracularly.

'Don't you smoke?' she asked.

'Oh, one by one you drag my vices from me. Let me own, _en bloc_, that
I have them all.'

'Then you may light a cigarette and give me one.'

He gave her a cigarette, and held a match while she lit it. Then he
lit one for himself. Her manner of smoking was leisurely, luxurious.
She inhaled the smoke, and let it escape slowly in a slender spiral.
He looked at her through the thin cloud, and his heart closed in a
convulsion. 'How big and soft and rich--how magnificent she is--like
some great splendid flower, heavy with sweetness!' he thought. He had
to breathe deep to overcome a feeling of suffocation; he was trembling
in every nerve, and he wondered if she perceived it. He divined the
smooth perfection of her body, through the supple cloth that moulded
it; he noticed vaguely that the dress she wore to-day was blue, not
black. He divined the warmth of her round white throat, the perfume of
her skin. 'And how those lips could kiss!' his imagination shouted
wildly. Again, the silence, the solitude and dimness of the forest,
their intimate seclusion there, the great trees, the sky, the bright
green cushion of moss, the few detached sounds,--bird-notes, rustling
leaves, snapping twigs,--by which the silence was intensified; again
all these lent an acuteness to his sensations. Her dark eyes were
smiling lustrously, languidly, at the smoke curling in the air before
her, as if they saw a vision in it.

'You're adorable at moments,' he said at last.

'At moments! Thank you.' She laughed.

'Oh, you can't expect me to pretend that I find you adorable always.
There are times when I could fall upon you and exterminate you.'

'Why?'

'When you passed me yesterday with a nod.'

'Twas your own fault. You didn't look amusing yesterday.'

'When you baffle my perfectly innocent desire to know whom I have the
honour of addressing.'

'Shall I summon Bezi