“Not to be—is it?” with a ghastly attempt at a laugh. “I’m a presumptuous idiot, and had better go my way rejoicing—especially rejoicing. Isn’t that it?”
But a radiantly killing smile was the answer now, scattering his despondency as the sun-ray had dispelled the dark storm-cloud which had overshadowed them up there on the arête.
“You are in a great hurry to answer your own question,” she said. “Doesn’t it strike you that I am the right person to do that—Phil?”
The very tone was a caress. The half-timid, half-mischievous way in which his Christian name—abbreviated too—escaped her was maddening, entrancing. Hardly knowing what he said in his incoherent transport of delight, he cast himself upon the bank beside her, regardless of bristling pine needles and the outpost prowlers of a large nest of red ants hard by. But Alma was not yet prepared to allow herself to be taken by storm in any such impetuous fashion.
“Now wait a minute, you supremely foolish creature,” holding up a hand warningly as he flung himself at her side—and her face flushed again; but there was a sunny light in her eyes, and a very sweet smile playing around her lips. “What I was going to say is this. You can’t decide any important question out of hand. It requires talking over—and—thinking over.”
“You darling! you tantalising enchantress!” he cried passionately. “Let us talk over it then, as much as you like. As for thinking over it—why, we’ve done enough of that already.”
“You have, you mean,” she corrected, archly. “Never mind. But—now listen, Phil. You think you are very, very fond of my unworthy self. Wait—don’t interrupt,” as the expression “you think” brought to his lips an indignant protest. “Yet you hardly know me.”
“I know you to be perfection,” he broke in hotly.
“That’s foolish,” she rejoined, but with a by no means displeased smile. “But, I say it again, you hardly know me. We meet here and see each other at our best, where everything is conducive to enjoyment and absolute freedom from worry, and then you tell me I am perfection—”
“So you are,” he interrupted emphatically.