"Loathe it? Of course you do! Of course you do! And you don't want to fall in love with one of these lads for a year or two, anyway?"
"Oh, my, no!" Nina felt the expression inadequate, but her breath had been taken away. The man had turned about a little, his eyes were all for her, and his arm, laid carelessly along the back of the green bench, almost touched the white ruffles. They were in full sight of the house, too, and if Lettice or Anna came back, they would see Nina in deep and lasting conversation with the man that all the older women were so mad about--
"You don't. But--what?" He bent his dark head.
"I said, 'But I don't know how you knew it'!" Nina repeated, looking down in her overwhelming self-consciousness, but with a smile of utter happiness and excitement.
A second later she looked up in some alarm. He was silent--she had somehow said the awkward thing again I Nina's heart fluttered nervously.
But what she saw reassured her. Royal Blondin had squared himself about, and had folded his arms, and was staring darkly into space.
"How I knew it!" he said in a half-whisper, as if to himself, after a full half-minute of silence that thrilled Nina to the soul. "Child, I don't know! Some day you and I will read books together--wonderful books! And then perhaps we will begin to understand the cosmic secret--why your soul reaches out to mine--why I not only want to know you better, but why it is my solemn obligation to take the exquisite thing your coming into my life may mean to us both! You're only a child," he went on, in a lighter tone, "and I can read those big eyes of yours, and can see that I'm frightening you! Well, this much remains. You and I have somehow found each other in all this wilderness of lies and affectations, and we're going to be friends, aren't we?"
"I--hope we are!" Nina said, clearing her throat, with a bashful laugh.
"You know we are!" Royal Blondin amended. And in a musing tone he added: "I'm afraid I was a little bitter a few hours ago. And then I saw you, just an honest, brave, bewildered little girl, wondering why the deuce they all make such a fuss about nothing--clothes and bridge parties and dinners--"
"They never SAY anything worth while!" Nina said, with daring. There was exquisite homage in the dropped, listening head, the eyes that smiled so close to her own. "But if I tell Mother that, she thinks I'm crazy!" she added, lapsing into the school vernacular against a desperate effort to sustain the conversation at his level.