"The best bits! Oh, I know you, Tristram Sahib!"
They both laughed. And suddenly the constraint between them had gone. He busied himself eagerly, preparing Wickie's old sleeping quarters, filling the tin feeding-plate with recklessly collected puppy dainties.
"Wickie'll be jolly glad," he said, in his boyish way. "He'd hate me to be lonely. And it's been lonely without him."
"Yes, I know." She went and stood by his table, playing idly with the letters which lay heaped upon it. "And there's something I want to ask in return—a sort of farewell gift. Make this a real day for us both—give me a good time—humour me. Let us be real with each other—sincere, just as we really are and feel. A sort of feast of honesty and fellowship. Will you?"
He stood beside her, looking down at her from his great height.
"Our day of days?"
"The day of our lives."
He flushed deeply under his tan, but he met her eyes steadily. A subtle change had come into his feeling for her. He could not have explained it—it was an odd sense of quiet nearness, of understanding. And she, too, seemed different. At other times she had been in earnest, but not as now. There had always been that curious detachment in her, as though she stood apart and laughed at life and herself. Now for a moment, at least, she had ceased to be an onlooker.
"Very well—we'll make each other a present," he said. "A day off from the world—something we won't account for to anybody." All at once he became recklessly happy. "I'll go and collect food," he said. "The pup can stay here and play locum tenens."
He came back presently from the kitchen. His sleeves were still rolled up, but he carried a basket under one arm and wore his helmet rakishly at the back of his head. Seeing him, the gravity passed like a mist from her eyes.