“I’m not in love just at the moment,” said Stella blandly.
“Do you mean to say you have been in love?”
“A good deal,” she admitted.
Michael leaped to his feet, and looked down on her recumbent in the bracken.
“But only in a stupid schoolgirly way?” he gasped.
“Yes, I suppose it was,” Stella paused. “But it was fearfully thrilling all the same—especially in duets.”
“Duets?”
“I used to read ahead, and watch where our hands would come together, and then the notes used to get quite slippery with excitement.”
“Look here,” Michael demanded, drawing himself up, “are you trying to be funny?”
“No,” Stella declared, rising to confront Michael. “He was one of my masters. He was only about thirty, and he was killed in Switzerland by an avalanche.”