Now, stung by the lash of her scorn, the sheer fact of her unattainableness seemed to redouble her charm.
There was something wraithlike about her. She appeared to hold kinship with the moonlight, which in its loveliness overspread lawns and flowerbeds near at hand and turned to opal the mists that hung and swayed over the valley beneath them, where the lovely Annandale roses were blowing.
Until now he had always thought that her big eyes were violet-blue. But suddenly he saw opal lights in them and opal flame. And her gown was not white and silver, as he had fancied, but spun of moonbeams and studded with opals.
Her long, sinuous figure, more revealed than hidden by its gauzy investure, suggested to him Lilith, and the medieval conception of an angel as well.
He hardly expected an answer to the exclamatory question wrung from him by the torture of her words, but she had it ready.
"Because I eminently prefer my matrimonial frying-pan to the blistering coals of the illicit," she said coolly.
The boy—for he was scarcely more, big and handsome and strong though he appeared—looked terribly wobegone. But on the comparison floated a straw, and like the proverbial drowning man, he clutched at it.
"You admit it's a frying-pan," he reminded her.
"Sizzling hot," she told him. "I'm scorched through and through. My heart's a cinder."
The straw went under, carrying him with it, but he still clung on. "Let me take you out of it," he pleaded desperately.