"I should n't, then."
"What do you want?"
"Silence, I think," said the girl in the chair, with a mischievous look at the back of her companion's head. Her face was demure again, however, when he turned. "Don't you like just to sit and gaze off into space on a languid night like this, and say nothing at all?"
"If you prefer to have me go home----"
"Not in the least. I 'd like to know you were there on call--if you would n't talk."
A silence of some length ensued. Brant stared moodily off over the darkening lawn, watching distant electric lights twinkle into existence along the rows of tree-tops which outlined the streets. Shirley closed her eyes. She really was more weary than she knew. It had been a busy winter in the office, and she had worked hard to be able to fill the place she held. Her achievements in the matter of the technical French correspondence had proved of considerable importance to the firm, and her satisfaction at becoming so useful had led her to spend much of her spare time in making herself proficient.
It was fully fifteen minutes--he thought it at least an hour--before Brant looked around. He had vowed to himself that he would give her all the silence she wanted, that he would not speak until she spoke. But after a time her absolute motionlessness struck him as caused by something even less flattering to himself than her desire for absence of speech.
"Confound it--I believe she 's gone to sleep!" he said to himself, and rose abruptly, to stand looking down at her, discomfited and very nearly angry. Of all the odd girls, one who would tell you to stop talking, and then go off to sleep in your presence, was certainly the oddest. He supposed she might be tired, and with reason, but--to go to sleep!
The shaded electric bulbs, which hung at each corner of the porch, at this moment came glowingly into life, as somebody within switched on the current. They were not designed to illuminate the porch strongly, only to turn its gloom into a mellow moonlight effect. But the light was quite sufficient to show Brant that although Shirley's lashes still swept her cheek, her lips were smiling.
"It was a frightful test of your friendship, n't it?" she murmured, without opening her eyes. "But you did nobly. I never thought you could hold out so long!"