“I think she was a stick.”
“You forget,” he said gently, “that you are speaking of the lady of my affections.”
“Oh, I am so sorry!” she cried contritely. “Please forgive me!”
“If you will let me smoke a cigarette.”
“Why not? Considering that I am on shore and you on the water it hardly seems necessary——”
“Well, of course it’s your own private pool,” he said. “I thought perhaps nymphs objected to the odor of cigarette-smoke around their habitations.”
“This nymph doesn’t mind it,” she answered.
He selected a cigarette from his case very leisurely. He had had several opportunities to see her eyes and was wondering whether they were really the color they seemed to be. He had thought yesterday that they were blue, like the sky, or a Yale flag or—or the ocean in October; in short just blue. But to-day, seen from a distance of some fifteen feet, and examined carefully, they appeared quite a different hue, a—a violet, or—or mauve. He wasn’t sure just what mauve was, but he thought it might be the color of her eyes. At all events, they weren’t merely blue; they were something quite different, far more wonderful, and infinitely more beautiful. He would look again just as soon as he had the cigarette lighted, and——
“Were you surprised to find me here this morning?” she asked suddenly. There was no hint of coquetry in her tone and he stifled the first reply occurring to him.
“I—no, I wasn’t—for some reason,” he answered honestly. “I dare say I ought to have been.”