"You adore this Rast, I suppose?"
"Yes, I like him."
"Nonsense! You mean that you adore him."
"Perhaps I do," said Anne, smiling. "I have noticed that our use of words is different."
"And how long have you adored him?"
"All my life."
The little sentence came forth gravely and sincerely. Helen surveyed the speaker with a quizzical expression in her narrow brown eyes. "No one 'adores' all one's life," she answered. Then, as Anne did not take up the challenge, she paused, and, after surveying her companion in silence for a moment, added, "There is no time fixed as yet for this marriage?"
"No; Rast has his position to make first. And I myself should be better pleased to have four or five years to give to the children before we are married. I am anxious to educate the boys."
"Bon!" said Helen. "All will yet end well, Virginie. My compliments to Paul. It is a pretty island pastoral, this little romance of yours; you have my good wishes."
The island pastoral was simple indeed compared with the net-work of fancies and manœuvres disclosed by Helen. Her life seemed to be a drama. Her personages were masked under fictitious names; the Poet, the Haunted Man, the Knight-errant, the Chanting Tenor, and the Bishop, all figured in her recitals, to which Anne listened with intense interest. Helen was a brilliant story-teller. She could give the salient points of a conversation, and these only. She colored everything, of course, according to her own fancy; but one could forgive her that for her skillful avoidance of dull details, whose stupid repetition, simply because they are true, is a habit with which many good people are afflicted.