I can be quite as foolish as you,” Inez repeated as Roddy continued to regard her. “Some day, when this is over, when you have made it all come right, we will sit out here and pretend that we have escaped from Venezuela, that we are up North in my mother’s country—in your country. We will play these are the rocks at York Harbor, and we’ll be quite young and quite happy. Have you ever sat on the rocks at York Harbor,” she demanded eagerly, “when the spray splashed you, and the waves tried to catch your feet?”
Roddy was regarding her in open suspicion. He retreated warily.
“York Harbor!” he murmured. “I discovered it! It is named after me. But you! I never imagined you’d been there, and I never imagined you could be anything but serious, either. It makes you quite dangerous.”
“Dangerous?” murmured the girl.
“One is dangerous,” said Roddy, “when one is completely charming.”
The girl frowned, and her shoulders moved slightly. “You speak,” she said, “like a Venezuelan.”
But Roddy was in no mood to accept reproof.
“I told you,” he said, “I admire the fools who rush in where angels fear to tread. There is another man I admire equally, ‘the man who runs away.’ It takes great courage to run away. I must do it now.”
He retreated from her. His eyes were filled with a sudden, deep delight in her, and a growing wonder. The girl regarded him steadily.
“Come here,” she commanded, “and say ‘Good-by’ to me.”