“My manners are atrocious,” said Bertram, “as you may have observed.”
She did not agree. She thought he had the look of a Lancelot in Tennyson’s “Idylls of the King,” which she read with exquisite delight.
It was impossible for Bertram to ignore the fact that she flirted with him ardently, and that her eyes worshipped him. He was not annoyed. He liked it. He liked the little curl that played about each cheek, and her milky skin, and her laughing voice, and pretty, plump figure. She was what Christy used to call, in his dry way, “a cuddlesome thing—and highly dangerous.”
Bertram did not find her extremely dangerous, though he acknowledged to himself that a little care might be necessary at times, if he wished to avoid temptation. There was no need why he should avoid temptation, being a free man, now that Joyce had flung him over, but always there was that trick of conscience in him, or self-imposed repression, which had held him back from easy amour, which meant no more to other men he knew than a passing adventure, without consequence. In any case, this girl was of high caste. A love affair would mean marriage, and he was not as free as that, nor so inclined.
There was a moment of danger one evening in the Grünewald, that wonderful woodland within a tram journey of Berlin. Dorothy and her husband had wandered away, hand in hand, like two lovers of the humbler class who came here also for their picnics and pleasure parties. Anna and Bertram sat together in a little bower, hidden from the passers-by, where they had all had tea together an hour or more ago. Birds were singing in the boughs above their heads, and Bertram sat with his back to a tree, listening to the pleasant twitter and watching the light play through the leaves. Anna sat on the grass, a yard away from him, with her muslin frock spread out and her straw hat by her side. The breeze played softly with the little curl on each cheek, and she was like the princess in a German fairy-tale.
“Bertram,” she said presently, “you are very silent. Talk to me, and tell me pretty things.”
“Silence is good,” he said. “I like looking at your prettiness.”
“So? Now that is what I like to hear you say!”
“I’ve said it.”
“Say it again. Do you think me pretty?”