"N-no. I wasn't thinking of that."
"Well, we've got to think, haven't we? To talk practical politics!"
"Rather not. I bar politics—practical or Utopian."
She laughed. There was happiness in her laugh, and tenderness and an undernote of triumph.
"You're delicious! So ardent, yet so absurdly detached from the dull plodding things that make up common life. Come—let's stroll. The verandah breathes heat like a benevolent dragon!"
They strolled in the cool darkness under drooping boughs, through which a star flickered here and there. He refrained from putting an arm round her, and was rewarded by her slipping a hand under his elbow.
"Shall it be—a Simla wedding?" she asked in her caressing voice. "About the middle of the season? June?"
"June? Yes. When I get back from Gilgit?"
"But—my dear! You're not going to disappear for two whole months?"
"I'm afraid so. I'm awfully sorry. But I can't go back on Lance."