"Can't you? Try."
She put her hand up to his, and he caught hold of her fingers, and dropped a light kiss on them as they lay crumpled up on his palm. Then he pressed them slightly, and let them go, and walked away to the house without looking at her again. His countenance was as unmoved as if he had just been talking archæology to the Rector; but his reflections seemed absorbing, and he hardly roused himself to move aside when Ted came lounging out of the house and ran against him in the porch.
"Hullo!" said Ted. "I'm awfully sorry; I didn't see you, really."
"Oh, no matter!" said Paul, who, never being guilty of a clumsy action himself, could afford to remain undisturbed. "Miss Katharine's in the summer house," he added, in answer to Ted's disconsolate look. "We've been reading Browning. At least, Miss Katharine out of her goodness has been trying to make a convert of me. I am afraid I was an unappreciative listener."
Ted glanced inquiringly at him. Somehow, it was not so easy to disapprove of Paul to his face as it was behind his back.
"How poor!" he said sympathetically. "Kitty does play so cheap, sometimes, doesn't she? Browning is enough to give you the hump, I should think. But she never does that to me."
"Probably," said Paul, disengaging a cigarette paper; "she would not feel the same necessity in your case. You would have greater facilities for conversation, I mean. Won't you have a cigarette?"
Ted looked towards the shrubbery, but lingered as though the invitation commended itself to him.
"I think I'll have a pipe, if it's all the same to you. May I try that 'baccy of yours? Thanks, awfully!"
They sat down on opposite sides of the little porch, and puffed away in silence.