"Not by me," he replied, with a certain self-complacency, "and you never will be, I trust. I should be a brute indeed were I to forget all your kindness."
"Dieu mercie," she flashed out, in sudden, uncontrollable resentment, "how I hate gratitude! It takes half the flavour out of life. I often think I should have been happier if I had not been so kind to people."
"I have no doubt you made them much happier, if that is any consolation to you."
"Not in the slightest." Then as suddenly her irritation passed, and she looked up at him with a whimsical smile. "Paul," she said, "I believe Miss Carmichael used to set you copies--or is it Miss Woodward? anyhow, you are detestably didactic to-day; so it is just as well the others are joining us, or you would be telling me that 'Evil communications corrupt good manners.'"
"The process is pleasant, anyhow," he replied, in one of those moments of recognition which come to us, even with familiar friends, as some quality or charm strikes us afresh; "and you couldn't corrupt my good temper, for you always put me into one, somehow. I believe you use arts and spells."
She shrugged her shoulders gaily. "Burn me as a witch, by all means! You can afford it since the next fairly good-looking woman you meet will have exactly the same consolatory power. As you said, the personal pronoun, feminine gender, third person singular, has a wide application for Paul Macleod. Ah! Miss Woodward, what lovely ferns! We have just been going round the houses, and there is a hibiscus out which you ought to see. It put me in mind of India; you sent the seed home from our garden, I think, didn't you, Captain Macleod? We might go back and look at it now, and return by the beach, mightn't we? It is no longer, and far prettier."
The result of which easy, deft manipulation of a chance meeting being that, ere the memory of his pleasant stroll with her had passed from Paul's somewhat vagrant mind, he was performing the same pilgrimage again under different guidance. Now, Alice Woodward was always counted a most agreeable girl in her world, and Paul, as in duty bound, laid himself out to please; yet all the time they were chatting amicably about Shakespeare and the musical glasses he was conscious of an effort, and of a desire to know what the other girls who were lagging behind with Violet could be laughing at so gaily.
"That is the hibiscus," he said, stopping abruptly before the flower which, with its creamy petals and crimson heart, had ten minutes before carried him back to another hemisphere, another life--a pleasant, younger life, with more possibilities of passion in it than the present one.
"It is very pretty," replied Alice, blandly, rather absently. "The colours are lovely. I really think colours improve every year. Do you remember at Constantinople, Captain Macleod, everyone agreed that there was a decided advance on Venice? In that ballet before the procession, you know, they really were exquisite."
Paul assented cheerfully, even though he felt such memories were as water after wine to Mrs. Vane's appeal to the past. "It used to grow by the well. Ah, Paul! how young you were on those days, and how you used to enjoy life."