"It really wasn't bad," he went on. "Anyway it made her laugh, but—she wouldn't look at a duffer like me." He sighed athletically. "She's much too clever; half the time you don't know what she's driving at, but you can bally well believe what she says."
It was nearly dark and they had drifted toward a semi-circular rustic bench at the foot of a towering horse-chestnut. Lionel lighted his briar and sank, in sack-like ease, into the uncomfortable seat, lulled by the incense man burns only to himself, the envy of the watching gods who invented eating and drinking and fighting and loving, and created the tobacco plant, but never thought of smoking.
Kate lighted a cigarette. But rustic seats with tree trunks for backs are not made for women. After picking some pieces of bark from her hair and attempting to fish others from the back of her neck, only to push them hopelessly out of reach, she jumped up impatiently and fell to pacing the soft turf behind the tree, the wavering light of her cigarette swaying hither and thither in the deepening gloom like a dissipated firefly.
"How very funny," she said at length, pausing in her walk to break the smoke silence, "that she can make you believe everything she says when you don't know what she's driving at. It sounds like mind reading."
Lionel watched a ball of gray smoke unravel itself and trail swiftly into the darkness above. "What's funny about mind reading?" he asked. "It strikes me it isn't any funnier than palm reading." Then after a contemplative pause, "That Baxter chap seemed to find your palm very interesting. Did he tell you anything exciting?"
"Very exciting," her voice came from the other side of the tree.
"I say, mayn't I know?"
"Oh, it wouldn't interest you."
"I hope it was something good. I'll punch Baxter's head if it wasn't."
"Then you do believe in palmistry?"