“You’re rather a pagan, you know.”
“Perhaps. Seems to me we’re all pagans these days. Except you. You’re rather old-fashioned.”
“I expect to remain so. Nevertheless, I wouldn’t be anywhere else. We needn’t talk at all, if you’d rather not. It is enough for me——”
“You asked me out to ‘have a talk,’ ” she said mischievously.
“I’m only too ready to listen to anything you may have to tell me.”
But Gita had no intention of telling anything. She had once obeyed an egotistical impulse and the present mess was the result.
But something must happen to make the night memorable. No hope of anything fortuitous. Impossible to turn over, and be rescued, in these narrow channels. Not a soul on the meadows but themselves. . . . She wasn’t cold, after all—rarely was, for that matter. That fur coat was a wedding-present from Mrs. Pleyden . . . well, let her thoughts scatter.
Their eyes met with that quick spontaneous smile of youth to youth, which may mean all or nothing. If Geoffrey were experiencing the pangs of unsatisfied love it was evident he had no intention of betraying himself. He was a young man indulging in a picturesque hour with a beautiful girl and it was a part of his part to be duly appreciative.
But with that quick involuntary response, that smiling subtly intimate exchange, she felt a curious stir in her body. An invisible cloak seemed to envelop her under that dark ugly cape and turn mere warmth into a glow. A curious sense of unreality. . . . Reality?
“Have we been here before?” she asked abruptly.