She declared, laughingly:
"While a single flight costs a brace of my hard-earned guineas, the sport is not for me! Why haven't I got a pal like your wonderful Mr. Sherbrand? I'm getting envious—you lucky infant, you!"
It didn't hurt to be called an infant by Pat, because she never would have done it in a stranger's hearing. And it was ripping to have her here, sharing his hour of joy.
He told her: "Father brought me here as a reward for making a model aëroplane. Reminds me!—I've got to tell you all about that. But it's only a toy and this is the Real Thing. There's nothing worth having in the whole world," added the unconscious philosopher "unless it's real and true!"
"Am I not real?" Patrine asked, squeezing his shoulder.
"Now you are!" He said it with an effort of candour. "But when I saw you a minute ago, I wasn't—quite sure." He glanced up at her and asked shyly: "Why are you different since you have been away in Paris?"
"Different, how different?" She whipped her hand from his shoulder. Her black eyebrows knitted, and her face stiffened into the strange mask that had puzzled him, under the scrutiny of his clear blue eyes. "Do I seem changed?" she queried. And Bawne answered:
"A little. I was afraid at first you were somebody else, because of"—he said it shyly—"because of your hair."
"My hair?" she repeated blankly, and then said awkwardly: "The air of Paris did that, darling, but it will soon be its old colour again!"
"Will it ever be just like it was before?" asked Bawne, looking innocently up at her, and something broke in Patrine's heart just then. She gave a sudden gasping sigh, and a sudden spate of tears rolled over her thick underlids, streamed down her pale cheeks, and fell upon her broad bosom, heaving under its thin covering of filmy white voile.