Colin stood open-mouthed.
“You perfectly glorious vision!” he said. “You’re superb: you’re dazzling!”
“Do you like it?” she said. “I was tired of being so dowdy.”
“Like it? I adore it,” said he. “It’s really almost worthy of you.”
She looked round the room.
“Oh, Colin, what a nice room!” she said. “Just a rug and a bed and a washing-stand and a couple of chairs. Tremendously like you, somehow.”
He laughed.
“I’m a penny, plain,” said he, “and you’re quite twopence, coloured. I bet you that gown didn’t cost less than twopence. Come to dinner. I shall walk backwards in front of you and stare at you.”
“You won’t. You’ll give me your arm.”
The table was set at the end of the pergola, lit by electric lights half screened in the vine-leaves, among which the bunches were beginning to ripen. Curtains of brown sailcloth were hung between the pillars, and Nino had drawn all these but one, so that their table was screened from the house, and the road below. This one square opening looked westwards where the last crimson of sunset was fading, and across it rose the black stem of the stone pine, and, though the night was windless here, some murmur as of the distant sea stirred drowsily in its branches. Nino, serving them, slipped noiselessly to and fro, and presently he brought them their coffee.