She kissed her brother on the forehead, on each cheek, and on the lips—an old form of embrace which she had instituted in token of reconciliation after their rare quarrels in the old childish days.
'I wonder,' said her brother, after a pause, 'when I shall have to congratulate you under the same happy circumstances?'
'Now, if you like, dear, leaving out the happy,' she said solemnly.
'Is Ritchie in town?'
'Yes; he came to-day, and to-morrow morning I go a-riding with him on the trimmest little colt in the world.'
This ride took the form of going to Brighton and a delightful gallop by the seaside, during which the colour leapt into Stella's cheeks with charming vividness, while her eyes seemed to imprison rays from the glancing sparkles of light on the softly-moving waves. Ted could scarcely take his eyes off her face. He longed to say a hundred things, but seeing that she was disinclined to talk, he also kept silent.
It was almost pathetic to notice how implicitly he responded to her moods as far as lay in his power. He did not understand her veiled irony, her bookish allusions, her sudden sparkling merriment at those 'trifles light as air' which touch the keen edges of a mind fully alive to the incongruities of life. But he understood when she wished to be silent or talk, when she wanted to hear about his horses, and when the wonderful bay colt, who promised to surpass all previous records, became intolerable to her.
Before turning homeward they paused at a little headland. The waves, crested with foam, broke against this in rollicking tumbled masses. There was a breeze fresh enough to ruffle the sea surface, so that the waves stretching out to the vast horizon curled here and there into foam, and broke on the shore with a long-drawn shuddering cadence, which was momentarily lost, and yet rose again, making itself distinct from the deeper symphony of the multitudinous waters far off. There were voices in the sea that morning which made Stella's heart beat as if she were listening to passionate music. Singly and near at hand the waves lisped and prattled; but altogether and far off, what solemn and terrible strength, what possibilities of sudden irretrievable shipwreck! Did they symbolize the Mount Tabors and Gehennas that darkly lurk within the human soul—its inappeasable longing for happiness—its certainty of storms and sorrows?
'A few moments here are worth a month of stupid Melbourne drawing-rooms, incessantly mimicking other mimicries,' said Stella, taking off her hat, so that the ozone-laden breeze might sweep away the tags and knots of tiresome thoughts that would thrust themselves between her and the sunshine.
'How long are you going to stay with Laurette?'