“It isn’t my idea of love,” Gabrielle persisted, with a faint stress on the personal pronoun.
“What would you call it?” David asked.
“Passion, egotism, selfishness,” the girl answered, unexpectedly and quietly, not raising her eyes, and as if she were thinking aloud.
“Oh——? And do you get this out of books?”
“Get what?” Gabrielle asked, after a pause.
“Your knowledge of love, Gay.”
Again a silence. Her eyes did not meet his, but she did not seem discomposed or agitated. She had gathered up a handful of white sand, and now she let it sift slowly through her fingers into the hemmed waters of the tide pool.
“Not entirely,” she answered, presently. And again the notes of her husky sweet voice seemed to David to fall slowly through the air like falling stars.
“I feel as if I had just begun to learn about it lately,” David said, clearing his throat and beginning to tremble. And as she did not answer, he told himself despairingly that he had again taken with her the very tone of all tones that must be avoided. “You’ve never been in love, Gabrielle?” he went on, desperately trying to lighten the tone of the conversation, make it seem like an ordinary casual talk.
“Why do you say that?” she asked, quickly. And now he had a flash of the star-sapphire eyes.