"Isn't it?" she demanded.
"No," said Antonio. "It is the place, where, yesterday morning, we ... where we didn't get on together as well as before."
"It was all my fault," she persisted. "I had a silly fit of prudishness, like a young miss just home from school. All the time we were trying to talk I was wondering what you thought of me for asking you to meet me alone in a wood."
"English ways are different from Portuguese," suggested Antonio.
"Not so very different, after all," she said. "Ask Mrs. Baxter. Or, rather, take care that you don't say half a word to Mrs. Baxter about it. If you do she will swoon away with horror at the news of my brazen forwardness."
"If you will lend me your little ivory tablets," replied Antonio, "I shall be able to begin making notes of all the things I am not to mention before Mrs. Baxter."
"Be serious for a minute," she urged with a heightening of color. "Unless I can make you understand, we must not meet this way any more. If we mustn't, if we can't, I don't expect it will matter very much to you; but ... it will to me."
Her eyes met Antonio's. This time it was he who colored up and fell into confusion. The only reply he could think of was a stilted compliment.
"The Senhorita does me a great and an undeserved honor," he stammered.
"Don't," she commanded, with an impatient gesture. "When you talk like that I hate you. Be sincere. Besides, I'm not a Senhorita. If I were a Senhorita I should have jet-black hair and big sentimental eyes, and I should never walk more than a mile in my life, and I should no more dream of meeting you like this than of dancing on a boa-constrictor. Are you going to talk like that any more? If so, we'll go home this minute and you can do it on the way."