“When a person owns something that’s rare and beautiful he oughtn’t to be mean about it.”
“I suppose not,” said the owner of the rare and beautiful possessions, keeping them sternly out of sight.
He continued to look ardently at her, not conscious of what he was doing, his step growing slower and slower.
“It’s a long climb,” he said at length.
“Yes,” she assented. “Is that why you’re going so slowly?”
“Are we going so slowly?” he asked, and as if to demonstrate how slow had been their progress, they both came to a stop like a piece of run-down machinery.
They looked at each other for a questioning moment, then burst into simultaneous peals of laughter.
One of the last and daintiest charms that nature can give a woman is a lovely laugh. It suggests unexplored riches of tenderness and sweetness, unrevealed capacity for joy and pain, as a harsh and unmusical laugh tells of an arid nature, hard, without juice, devoid of imagination, mystery and passion. Like her mother before her, Mariposa possessed this charm in its highest form. The ripple of sound that flowed from her lips was music, and it cast a spell over the man at whose side she stood, as Lucy’s laugh, twenty-five years before, had cast one over Dan Moreau.
“I never heard you laugh before,” he said in delight. “What can I say to make you do it again?”
“You didn’t say anything that time,” said Mariposa. “So I suppose the best way is for you to be silent.”