“What miracle, Paul?”
“The miracle of man and woman,—of you and me—who want to be together—who are hungry when we are not together,—who walk amongst rainbows when we are.”
Paul was the “grand serieux,” as Gerard de Montignac had called him, warning him too of that very fate which had befallen him. Love of this girl had swept him off his feet, calf-love and man’s love had come to him at once. Marguerite was new and entrancingly strange to him as Eve to Adam. He made much of her judgment, as lovers will, marvelling when she swept to some swift, sane decision whilst he was debating the this and the that. She entertained him one moment as though he were an audience and she a company of players; she was the tenderest of companions the next: in her moments of passion she made him equal with the gods; and the pride and glory to both of them was that each had been the first to enter the heart and know the embraces of the other.
“Paul, what are you thinking about?” she asked.
“That’s the prettiest frock I have seen you in,” said he, and with a smile of pleasure she raised herself and sat at his side.
“It’s the prettiest I have got,” she returned.
Paul lifted a strip of the fragile skirt between his fingers.
“It’s a funny thing, Marguerite,” he said. “But until I knew you, I never noticed at all whether a girl was wearing a topping frock or whether she was dowdy. So long as they had something over their shoulders, they were all pretty much the same to me.”
“And now?” asked Marguerite.
“Well, it’s different,” said Paul, disappointing her of her expected flattery. “That’s all.”