Her soft, ringing laugh suddenly rippled out beneath the opulent foliage.
“My poor Basil!” she sympathized. “That’s what comes of being in love! Hortense Gervex used to tell me, when I was a baby, that Cupid is the silliest of all the gods, because he takes a malicious pleasure in stupefying all his subjects.”
“Comes from being in love?” Basil said, slowly. “Oh, of course that would be an explanation.”
“It is!” she triumphed. “Why, ever since you met Laurence you have been so different, so unlike your old self. Still, you should not carry your absence-of-mind too far; it is dreadfully impolite, you know.”
“I know,” he assented, apparently quite absorbed in the fantastic beauty of a bird-of-paradise blossom he had disengaged from amid its long, lance-like leaves.
“Well, if you know, and are properly contrite for your sins, do you mind if I now repeat my question?”
“Mind? Repeat it by all means, if you find me still worthy of the slightest attention.”
She had walked farther into the perfumed bower, and was now standing in the searching noonday light that was powerless to reveal a single flaw in her loveliness. She looked like one of the faintly-rose camellias on a near-by bush—surely made from the same cool velvet as her little face.
She inclined her head graciously—the “Gamin” was certainly growing up in the social amenities.
“You will not think me altogether indiscreet—I hope,” she questioned, in a suddenly crisp-cut voice he had never heard her use before, and there was a quaint little assumption of solicitude as she went on, “if I reask where you intend to spend the summer?”