“Has anything happened?” she asked in some alarm.
“That is for you to say,” answered Léon with unusual gravity. “For my part I have found you--and that for the moment is enough.”
“Didn’t you mean to stay down there, then?” asked Rose in some bewilderment.
“Never in the world,” said Léon more lightly. “Am I the kind of man to engage myself with the temple of Mithras, je m’en fiche de Mithras! I beg your pardon--I should say, in the phrase of your American cousins, I have no use for him!”
There was no one but themselves in the Baths of Caracalla, the great pink walls stretched spaciously around them, the blue sky benignantly overhead, under foot the fresh spring grasses spread like an emerald fire.
“I suppose we ought to go all over it properly,” Rose asked a little wistfully. Léon shook his head. “Why should we do that?” he objected. “Let us leave propriety to Mithras. If ancient history is true, he stood much in need of it. For ourselves, let us sit down in this corner--under the shelter of the ivy--and look at the pink blossoms in front of us. If you had not informed me how serious it is to pay compliments, I should have told that tree--that it was very nearly as pretty as the English complexion; but as I am a very truthful man and have no wish to curry favor with any one, I should have added, not quite.”
Rose smiled a little tremulously. She said nothing, but she hoped Léon would go on talking. She turned her eyes on the almond tree; its pale pink flowers hung above them like a little cloud.
A silence fell between them, a significant, tremendous silence. Rose became aware that she was alone with Léon in a way in which she had never been alone with any one before. Their privacy was as breathless as danger. In a moment more it seemed to Rose something tremendous would have happened like an earthquake or a volcano, but probably much nicer than these manifestations of nature.
Then she knew that it had happened already. Léon had caught both her hands in his. “Mademoiselle,” he asked her in a queer, strained voice, “Has any man ever kissed you before?”
She lifted frightened, fluttering eyes to his--they were wonderful in their candor.