"Mais non, chérie . . . a thousand pardons! But it is no fault of mine that you have the footfall of a bird!"
She laughed in spite of herself.
"Keep those sort of speeches for Miss Mayhew. She may possibly believe
them. It would be all the same if I had the footfall of an elephant!
Nothing short of siege-guns would distract your mind from that picture.
It has bewitched you."
"Eh bien! When it is complete it will be a masterpiece," he assured her loftily.
"No doubt! But, in the meanwhile, it may interest you to know that except for a genuine miracle, I should not be here at all."
"Mon Dieu! But what happened? Tell me."
Flinging aside palette and brushes, he caught her hands in his, and it cost her an effort to preserve her lightness of tone.
"Nothing blood-curdling, since you see me without bruise or scratch. Only Yorick and I got tangled up with a herd of buffaloes on the Kajiar Road. In his fright, the little fool slipped half over the khud, and if a knight-errant had not fallen from heaven, in the nick of time, we should both be lying somewhere in the valley by now, 'spoiling a patch of Indian corn'!"
Maurice frowned. "Don't be gruesome, Quita."
"Sorry. I didn't mean to be. I was only quoting that uncannily clever Kipling boy at Lahore. Yorick and I were slithering over, just like the loathly Tertium Quid on the Mushobra Road; and there is plenty of Indian corn in the valley! I thought of it, all in a flash, and it wasn't enlivening, I assure you."