"It may be managed," he assented. "It has always been done, for the garden is for the ladies. Whenever you wish to be in the garden you have but to send word, and the household will remain in the court, as is, indeed, the custom."
"It would not be so terrible, you know, if a gardener or a donkey-boy did see my face!" laughed Arlee. "Plenty of them have had that pleasure before this."
She saw that the young man's face changed. Every clear-cut line of it was sharp with repugnance. "You need not remind me of that," he said with muffled fierceness, staring down at his plate.
"The danger line!" she thought while shaking her head at him, with the tense semblance of an amused little smile.... "You aren't the least bit English," she rebuked, "and I thought you were."
"Not in that.... And some day England will see her folly."
"America is seeing her folly now," thought Arlee with secret bitterness. But when she raised her eyes they were gently contemplative. She spoke musingly.
"In things like that you aren't at all what I thought you were—about our social customs, I mean. Yet fundamentally, I think you are."
"That I am what?"
"What I thought you were."
He waited, palpably waited, but Arlee continued to peel a tangerine with absorption, and the question had to come from him. He put it with an air of indolent amusement, yet she felt the intent interest in leash.