“No.”
She was silent, leaning forward, with her elbows on her knees and her clasped hands against her lips. Then, not moving, she said softly:
“Well—I won't!”
She was silent again, and he said nothing, but looked at her, seeming to be content with looking. Her attitude was one only a graceful person should assume, but she was graceful; and, in the wan light, which made a prettily shaped mist of her, she had beauty. Perhaps it was beauty of the hour, and of the love scene almost made into form by what they had both just said, but she had it; and though beauty of the hour passes, he who sees it will long remember it and the hour when it came.
“What are you thinking of?” he asked.
She leaned back in her chair and did not answer at once. Then she said:
“I don't know; I doubt if I was thinking of anything. It seems to me I wasn't. I think I was just being sort of sadly happy just then.”
“Were you? Was it 'sadly,' too?”
“Don't you know?” she said. “It seems to me that only little children can be just happily happy. I think when we get older our happiest moments are like the one I had just then: it's as if we heard strains of minor music running through them—oh, so sweet, but oh, so sad!”
“But what makes it sad for YOU?”