They were silent for a while, the girl with her head bent and her long lashes hiding her eyes from him as she sat in the deck-chair, and he thinking of what his sisters would really say if he wrote and told them that he thought he had at last found a woman he would wish to make his wife.
“Tessa.”
“Yes, Harvey.”
She did not look at him, only bent her head still lower.
“Tessa!”
“Yes, Harvey.”
Her hands were trembling, and her courage was gone, for there was something in his voice that filled her with delight.
“Tessa,” he said, speaking softly, as he drew nearer to her, and tried to make her look at him; “do you know that you are a very beautiful woman?”
“I am glad you think so, Harvey,” she whispered. “You used to tell father that Carmela and Librada were the most beautiful women you had ever seen.”
“So they were. But you are quite as beautiful. And, Tessa——”