Pensive, the girl trained her long skirts heedlessly over the dew-drenched grasses, Amber at her side, himself speechless with an intangible, ineluctable, unreasoning sense of expectancy. Never, he told himself, had a lover's hour been more auspiciously timed or staged; and this was his hour, altogether his!… If only he might find the words of wooing to which his lips were strange! He dared not delay; to-morrow it might be too late; in the womb of the morrow a world of chances stirred—contingencies that might in a breath set them a world apart.
They found seats in the shadow of a pepul.
"You must be tired, Mr. Amber," she said. "Why don't you smoke?"
"I hadn't thought of it, and hadn't asked permission."
"Please do. I like it."
He found his cigarette-case and struck a match, Sophia watching intently his face in the rosy glow of the little, flickering flame.
"Are you in the habit of indulging in protracted silences?" she rallied him gently. "Between friends of old standing they're permissible, I believe, but——"
"A day's journey by tonga matures acquaintanceships wonderfully," he observed abstrusely.
"Indeed?" She laughed.
"At least, I hope so."