"Nor reproachful?"
"How? When I have nothing to reproach you for?" she answered.
He put his palette aside and came and sat at her feet on the step of the dais where he had posed her.
"You may rest," he said, smiling up at her—"And so may I." She sat down beside him and he folded her in his arms. "How often we rest in this way, don't we!" he murmured—"And so you think you have nothing to reproach me for! Well,—I'm not so sure of that—Innocent!"
She looked at him questioningly.
"Are you talking nonsense, my 'Sieur Amadis'?—or are you serious?" she asked.
"I am quite serious—much more serious than is common with me," he replied, taking one of her hands and studying it as the perfect model it was—"I believe I am involving you in all sorts of trouble—and you, you absurd little child, don't see it! Suppose Miss Leigh were to find out that we make the maddest love to each other in here—you all alone with me—what would she say?"
"What COULD she say?" Innocent demanded, simply—"There is no harm!—and I should not mind telling her we are lovers."
"I should, though!" was his quick thought, while he marvelled at her unworldliness.
"Besides"—she continued—"she has no right over me."