hen we are usually inclined to do it
again--whatever it is. . . . I do not mean for one moment to be disloyal
to Austin; you know that. . . . But I am so thankful that Gerald is fond
of you. . . . You like him, too, don't you?"

"I am very fond of him."

"Well, then," she said, "you will talk to him pleasantly--won't you? He
is _such_ a boy; and he adores you. It is easy to influence a boy like
that, you know--easy to shame him out of the silly things he does. . . .
That is all the confidence I wanted, Captain Selwyn. And you haven't
told me a word, you see--and I have not fainted--have I?"

They laughed a little; her fingers, which had tightened on his arm,
relaxed; her hand fell away, and she straightened up, sitting Turk
fashion, and smoothing her hair which contact with the pillows had
disarranged so that it threatened to come tumbling over eyes and cheeks.

"Oh, hair, hair!" she murmured, "you're Nina's despair and my endless
punishment. I'd twist and pin you tight if I dared--some day I will,
too. . . . What are you looking at so curiously, Captain Selwyn? My
mop?"

"It's about the most stunningly beautiful thing I ever saw," he said,
still curious.

She nodded gaily, both hands still busy with the lustrous strands. "It
_is_ nice; but I never supposed you noticed it. It falls to my waist;
I'll show it to you some time. . . . But I had no idea _you_ noticed
such things," she repeated, as though to herself.

"Oh, I'm apt to notice all sorts of things," he said, looking so
provokingly wise that she dropped her hair and clapped both hands over
her eyes.

"Now," she said, "if you are so observing, you'll know the colour of my
eyes. What are they?"

"Blue--with a sort of violet tint," he said promptly.

She laughed and lowered her hands.

"All that personal attention paid to me!" she exclaimed. "You are
turning my head, Captain Selwyn. Besides, you are astonishing me,
because you never seem to know what women wear or what they resemble
when I ask you to describe the girls with whom you have been dining or
dancing."

It was a new note in their cordial intimacy--this nascent intrusion of
the personal. To her it merely meant his very charming recognition of
her maturity--she was fast becoming a woman like other women, to be
looked at and remembered as an individual, and no longer classed vaguely
as one among hundreds of the newly emerged whose soft, unexpanded
personalities all resembled one another.

For