"Why don't you go and try the fish?" she said. "Or—or—go for a ride? You only wander about the gardens or in the meadows."
He looked at her curiously.
"Why do not you?" he said, slowly, his large blue eyes fixed on her face, which grew slowly blush-red under his regard. "You do not seem to take much interest in things, Stel. You don't go and fish, or—or—take a drive, or anything. You only wander about the garden, or in the meadows."
The long lashes swept her cheeks, and she struggled with a sigh. His words had told home.
"But—but," she said falteringly, "I am not a boy. Girls should stay at home and attend to their duties."
"And walk and move as if they were in a dream—as if their hearts and souls were divorced from their bodies—and miles, miles away," he said, waving his thin white hand in the air slowly.
Her lips quivered, and she turned her face away, but only for a moment; it was back upon him with a smile again.
"You are a foolish, fanciful boy!" she said, putting her hand on his shoulder and caressing his cheek.
"Perhaps so," he said. "'My fancies are more than all the world to me,' says the poet, you know," he added, bitterly.