"'Or something'!" she repeated with a ripple of laughter.
It was the first time he had heard this laugh; and Marot's lines ran through his mind:
"Good God! 'twould make the very streets and ways
Through which she passes, burst into a pleasure!
******
No spell were wanting from the dead to raise me,
But only that sweet laugh wherewith she slays me!"
"'Or something!'" she repeated, I say; "it might just as well be the profiles of a new pipe-line survey, for all the interest you take in it. I oughtn't to look at them with you; but come, they're over here on the table."
Somehow, this lady's air required the deferential offer of his arm; and somehow, the deference seemed to please her. So he felt that the tension was lessened as she turned over the blue-prints. Moreover, in matters of architecture he felt at home—if he could only steer clear of any discussion of the grounds. He had no idea of the location of these.
Soon their heads were close together over the plans. A dozen times her hair brushed his lips, two or three times his fingers touched the satin skin of her arms and shoulders, and all the time he felt himself within the magic atmosphere which enwraps so divine a maiden, as odorous breezes clothe the shores of Ceylon. Her breath, the faint sweet perfume in her hair, the soft frou-frou of her skirts, the appealing lowness of her voice—all these wrought strongly on Florian; and when she leaned lightly upon him as she reached past him for one of the sheets, he felt (I record it to his credit) as if he must take her to his arms, and complete the embrace she had involuntarily half begun. But the feeling that she was, after all, a strange young girl, and was revealing herself to him altogether under a mistake as to his identity, restrained him.
[Illustration: Soon their heads were
close together over the plans]
She did not lean against him any more. There were some little improvements in the plans which had occurred to Elizabeth, especially in the arrangement of kitchen, pantry and laundry.