The air was full of exhilaration; people were laughing and chatting. The British Ambassador displayed the plaid of a Colonel of Highlanders; he had fought in the Soudan. The Chinese Minister was in his own mandarin costume; from his round, jade-buttoned hat swept the much coveted peacock feathers and on his breast were the stars of the "Rising-Sun" and the "Double-Dragon." The American Ambassador alone, of all the foreign representatives, wore the plain frock-coat and silk hat of the civilian. From group to group strolled officials of the Japanese Foreign Office and Cabinet Ministers, their ceremonial coats crossed by white or crimson cordons. And through it all Barbara moved, responsive to all this lightness and color, bowing here and there to introductions that left her only the more conscious of the one tall figure that had met them and now walked at her side.
Daunt could not have told that the flowers in her hat were brown orchids: he only knew that they matched the color of her eyes. Last night the moonlight had lent her something of the fragile and ethereal, like itself. Now the sunlight painted in clear warm colors of cream and cardinal. It glinted from the perfect curve of her forehead, and tangled in the wide wave of her bronze hair, making it gleam like hot copper spun into silk-fine strands. His finger-tips tingled to touch it.
He started, as—"A penny for your thoughts," she said, with sudden mischief.
"Have you so much about you?" he countered.
"That's a subterfuge."
"You wouldn't be flattered to hear them, I'm afraid."
"The reflection is certainly a sad blow to my self-esteem!"
"Well," he said daringly, "I was thinking how I would like to pick you up in my arms before all these people and run right out in the center of that field—"
She flushed to the tips of her ears. "And then—"
"Just run, and run, and run away."