"It is pleasanter to sit, n'est-ce pas?"
"Yes. But we mustn't sit long."
"Mustn't we? How does one measure time on such a night as this? By the beating of hearts, or by the pulsations of stars?"
She laughed softly.
"How foolish you are!"
"It is good to be foolish at the right time, and with the right person! Wisdom is the death's-head at the feast of life. But we are going to shut her outside the door for a whole week—you and I."
The strangely sweet magic of those linked pronouns stirred Elsie as never before; though the sound of them had pleased her once, not a little, on the lips of Kenneth Malcolm. Bud she answered lightly, as women will, when they feel barriers giving way.
"I never knew I had agreed to anything so desperate!"
He had laid his arm along the back of the seat; so that his hand was within an inch of her shoulder. He moved it closer.
"You have done more than that without knowing it—petite amie," he said, yielding himself, as always, to the witchery of the moment. "It is your doing that I have achieved an inspired picture. It is your doing that I want this week in Arcadia to be an idyll we shall neither of us forget—an idyll of sunlight, moonshine, and blessed freedom from les convenances. No past—no future—only the present; and in it two spirits tuned to one key. That is the secret of perfect enjoyment."