"Yes; you certainly have an admirable memory!" Harry murmurs, flattered.
"Not for everything," she declares, eagerly; "I never can remember certain things. For instance, I never can remember the unmarried name of Peter the Great's mother."
"She was a Narischkin, I believe," says Harry, who learned the fact on one occasion when some foolish Narischkin was boasting of his imperial connections.
Heaven knows what induces him to make a display to Paula of his historical knowledge. He usually suppresses everything in that direction which he owes to his good memory, as a learned marriageable girl will hold her tongue for fear of scaring away admirers. Harry thinks it beneath his dignity to play the cultured officer. He leaves that to the infantry.
"You distance me in every direction," Paula says; "but as a whip you inspire me with the most respect. I could not take my eyes off your turn-out that day in the Prater. How docile and yet how spirited those five creatures were under your guidance! And you sat there holding the reins with as much indifference apparently as if they had been your shake at a state ceremony. I cannot understand how you contrive to keep the reins of a five-in-hand disentangled."
"I find it much more difficult to understand how a man can play the guitar," Harry says, dryly.
Paula laughs, though with a sense of vexation at being still so far from the attainment of her purpose. She takes off her tall hat, tosses it carelessly into the seat behind them, and slowly pulls the gloves off her white hands.
"That is refreshing!" she says, and then is silent. For the nonce it is her wisest course.
Harry's eyes seek her face, then take in her entire figure, and then again rest upon her face. The moon is shining with a hard, bluish brilliancy, almost like that of an electric light, and it brings into wondrous relief the girl's mature beauty. Its intense brightness shimmers about her golden hair; the red and white of her complexion blend in a dim, warm pallor. Her white hands rest in her lap as she leans back among the cushions of the phaeton.
Click-clack--click-clack--the hoofs of the horses fly over the smooth, hard road; duller and less regular grows the beat of the horses' hoofs behind the wagon,--of Harry's steed and that of his groom.