“Marry him!” She moved her hand to her head languidly. “I don’t know. One ought to marry the person one loves best—in England, ought one not?”
“Certainly,” assented Lauriston, wondering at the power this mere child possessed of moving him, an altogether unsusceptible mortal, as he flattered himself, to impulses of passion.
“Then I must wait a little longer and be sure,” she said, twisting her head upon her neck with the daring, instinctive coquetry of a girl of five.
“You would rather have a—a—an Oriental like this Rahas, wouldn’t you?” he said in a low voice, his tone bearing more meaning than he wished.
“I don’t know,” she said, and stooping, she picked up a string of beads from among the débris on the floor.
He had come a step nearer to her, and as she stooped, by accident or design—with such a coquette one could not say which—she stumbled upon a rug and fell forward against him. He seized her with a gasp, and held her as she looked up with a laughing, provoking, irresistible face. She felt him shiver as he withdrew from her with such suddenness that she, leaning upon his arm, almost staggered.
“What is the matter?” she asked, as he drew out his watch with fingers so unsteady that he detached the chain.
“I—I beg your pardon,” he stammered, “but I have a most desperately important appointment with—with my colonel, in fact, which I shall miss if I don’t fly in the most unceremonious manner.”
Her face changed. A glow, not of anger, but of passionate disappointment, flushed her face, and the tears welled up into her eyes. Lauriston grew very hot, and, all in a fever of excitement, wondered at this.
“When will you come again?” she asked breathlessly, raising her beautiful face with parted red lips. “You will not come again. Ah, I know you, you cold Englishman, you will forget me, forget the poor little girl whom you saw in flames. Oh, no; you must not!” With another passionate change, her face grew tender and caressing, as she cooed out the pleading words like music to his unwilling ears. “Promise you will come again within a week. No, no, a promise won’t do,” as Lauriston, glad to be let off so easily, opened his mouth. “Swear, swear that you will come here again—within a week.”