Then she felt her failure so acutely that she blushed, and to hide it buried her chin in her fur and sniffed at the violets on her breast.
His voice came, close to her ear, very kind, as if he hadn't noticed the blush,
"Well, then, I'll express it differently. I'll say you're just charming.
Will that do?"
"I don't think I am. It sounds like someone smaller. I'm too big to be charming."
That made him laugh, a jolly ringing note.
"Whatever you think you are, I think you're the most delightful person in San Francisco."
The silks rustled again. Chrystie lifted her eyes from the violets to the bench opposite from which two Italian women were watching with deep interest this coquetting of the lordlings.
"Now you're making fun of me," she said, like a wounded child.
"Oh, dear lady," it was he who was wounded, misunderstood, hurt, "how unkind and how untrue. Could I make fun of anyone I admired, I respected, I—er—thought as much of as I do of you?"
She looked down at her muff. Just for a moment he thought her shyness was quite winning.