"You are, aren't you?"
"I—well, I'm afraid I am, a little."
"You could never have looked in the glass if you weren't. Didn't you see, or guess, that I was talking about an Ideal whom I had conjured into being, as a desirable companion in that garden? I can't understand from the way the conversation ran, how you could have helped it. When I first went to the battlement garden I was several years younger, steeped with the spirit of Provence and full of thoughts of Nicolete. I was just sentimental enough to imagine that such a girl as Nicolete was with me there, and always afterward I associated the vision of the Ideal with that garden. I said to myself, that I should like to come there again with that Ideal in the flesh. And then—then I did come again—with you."
"But you said—you thought of her always—that because you couldn't have her—or something of the sort—"
"Well, all that was no surprise to you, was it? You must have known perfectly well—ever since that night at Avignon when you let your hair down, anyhow, if not before, that I was trying desperately hard not to be an idiot about you—and not exactly radiant with joy in the thought that whoever the man was who would get you, it couldn't be I?"
"O-oh!" I breathed a long, heavenly breath, that seemed to let all the sorrows and worries pour out of my heart, as the air rushed out of my lungs. "O-oh, you can't mean, truly and really, that you're in love with Me, can you?"
"Surely it isn't news to you."
"I should think it was!" I exclaimed, rapturously. "Oh, I'm so happy!"
"Another scalp—though a humble one?"
"Don't be a beast. I'm so horribly in love with you, you know. It's been hurting so dreadfully."