He smiled at her. Something had taken ten years from his age to-night. Youth shone out upon his face, the beauty of his twenties had come back. "Lalage!" he murmured, more to himself than to her—"dulce ridentem, dulce loquentem!"
"What—Gilbert?"
"I was quoting some Latin to myself, Cupid dear."
"And it was all Greek to me!" she said in a flash. "Oh! who ever saw so many hors d'œuvres all at one time! I love hors d'œuvres, advise me, don't let me have too many different sorts, Gilbert, or I shan't be able to eat anything afterwards."
How extraordinarily fresh and innocent she was! She possessed in perfection that light, reckless and freakish humour which was so strong a side of his own temperament.
She had stepped from her dingy little flat, from a common cab, straight into the Dance of the Hours, taking her place with instant grace in the gay and stately minuet.
For it was stately. All this quintessence of ordered luxury and splendour had a most powerful influence upon the mind. It might have made Caliban outwardly courteous and debonnair.
Yes, she was marvellously fresh! He had never met any one like her. And it was innocence, it must be. Yet she was very conscious of the power of her beauty and her sex—over him at any rate. She obviously knew nothing of the furtive attention she was exciting in a place where so many jaded experts came to look at the flowers. It was the naïve and innocent Aspasia in every young girl bubbling up with entire frankness. She was amazed and half frightened at herself—he could see that.
Well! he was very content to be Pericles for a space, to join hands and tread a measure with her and the rosy-bosomed hours in their dance.
It was as though they had known each other for ever and a day, ere half the elaborate dinner was over.