'Which are your favourites?'
'Lilies of the valley.' Althea spoke kindly, as she might have spoken to a rather importunate child; his questions, indeed, were not original.
Gerald tried to mend the tameness of the effect that he was making. 'Yes, only the florists have rather spoiled them, haven't they? My favourites are the wilder ones—honeysuckle, grass of Parnassus, bell-heather. Helen always makes me think of grass of Parnassus and bell-heather, she is so solitary and delicate and strong.' He wanted Althea to realise that his real appreciation was for types very different from Lady Pickering. She smiled kindly, as if pleased with his simile, and he went on. 'You are like pansies, white and purple pansies.'
It was then that Althea blushed. Gerald noticed it at once. Experienced flirt as he was he was quick to perceive such symptoms. And, suddenly, it occurred to him that perhaps the reason she disapproved so much was the wish—unknown to herself, poor little innocent—that some one would flirt a little with her. He felt quite sure that no one had ever flirted with Althea. Helen had told him of Mr. Kane's hopeless suit, and they had wandered in rather helpless conjecture about the outside of a case that didn't, from their experience of cases, seem to offer any possibilities of an inside. Gerald had indeed loudly laughed at the idea of Mr. Kane as a wooer and Helen had smiled, while assuring him that wooing wasn't the only test of worth. Gerald was rather inclined to think it was. He was quite sure, though, that however worthy Mr. Kane might be he had never made any one blush. He was quite sure that Mr. Kane was incapable of flirting, and it pleased him now to observe the sign of susceptibility in Althea. It was good for women, he felt sure, to be made to blush sometimes, and he promised himself that he would renew the experiment with Althea. All the same it must be very unemphatically done; there would be something singularly graceless in venturing too far with this nice pansy, for though she might, all unaware, want to be made to blush, she would never want it to be because of his light motives.
Meanwhile Althea was in dread lest he should see her discomposure and her bliss. He did not see further than her discomposure.
They rehearsed theatricals all the next day—he, Helen, Lady Pickering, and the girls—and Lady Pickering was very naughty. Gerald, more than once, had caught Althea's eye fixed, repudiating in its calm, upon her. It had been especially repudiating when Frances, at tea, had thrown a bun at him.
'Do you know, Miss Jakes,' he said to her after dinner, when, to Lady Pickering's discomfiture, as he saw, he joined Althea on her little sofa, 'do you know, I suspect you of being dreadfully bored by all of us. We behave like a lot of children, don't we?' He was thinking of the bun.
'Indeed! I think it charming to be able to behave like a child, if one feels like one,' said Althea, coldly and mildly.
'Don't you ever feel like one? Do you always behave like a gentle muse?'
'Do I seem to behave like a muse? How tiresome I must be,' smiled Althea.