K. Stuyvesant nodded, but he hadn't heard what she said. He was undergoing new and terrifyingly beautiful sensations.
"The Higgenmeyers are dear, aren't they?" said Cecilia.
"Um hum," answered K. Stuyvesant. He turned quite boldly and stared at her, while she looked out upon the sea and sky. He wondered, while he swallowed hard, whether he had any chance. He wished he weren't such a duffer! He even wished faintly that she weren't so wonderful.
Cecilia looked up at him again, and again the warm colour came into her cheeks. Then she began to talk quickly of a recent play. Her voice was not quite steady. She wouldn't meet his eyes.
Miss Hutchinson was speaking of a paper she'd read before the Boston literati on "The Message of Ibsen." Cecilia didn't know much about Ibsen, but she thought he would have been rather surprised if he'd heard what he "really meant."
K. Stuyvesant was, as usual, with them. Cecilia and he looked at each other often. The new, disconcerting light in his eyes had given way, and was displaced for the moment by a mischievous twinkle. Cecilia was able to look at him frankly again.
Miss Hutchinson arose, untangling from her steamer blanket like a huge butterfly from a cocoon. "My point was," she said loudly, "that Ibsen is the Seer of those who SEE, but," she sighed, "there are so few of us!"
She vanished.
Cecilia giggled. "Are you one of us?" she asked of K. Stuyesant.
"Lord, no!" he answered laughing, and then added seriously, "I'm an awful duffer. Stupid and all that. I never used to care, but now I do. You—you don't read that kind of stuff, do you?" His appeal held a great fear.