"Not to save my life," he said at once; adding, as if to reassure himself, "but I know."
"You could tell me, perhaps?" she suggested presently.
"Heavens, no!" he exclaimed. "You least of all. You'd think me crazy."
"Oh, I think you that as it is," she admitted thoughtfully.
He laughed, but with his eyes still occupied with the beauty of her bent figure.
He filled his left hand absently with the little shells on which he lay, shaking them up and down on his open palm, till only a few were left between his fingers. As he dropped these into the other hand, his eye fell upon them.
"I say! what dear little things!" he exclaimed enthusiastically. "Why didn't you tell me about them?"
Lettice turned her head.
"I thought you'd seen them," she said indifferently.
"They're quite incredible," he went on, too absorbed in his discovery to notice her tone; "how is it that, with an ocean falling on them here, they're not ground to gruel. They make me feel more than ever an interloper. You should have moored me out in the boat: this floor was laid for naiads and fays and pixies; for nothing so heavy-footed as a man."