"Monsieur," she expostulated smilingly, "your apropos disturbs me. Have you the assurance to believe that you already appeal to my heart?"[pg 332]
"Have I not appealed to it a little, Maryette?"
The girl averted her head coquettishly. For a few minutes they scrubbed away there together, side by side on their knees above the rim of the pool. Then, without warning, his hot, red lips burned her neck. Her swift recoil was also a shudder; her face flushed.
"Don't do that!" she said sharply, straightening up in the grass where she was kneeling.
"You are so adorable!" he pleaded in a low, tense voice.
There was a long silence. She had moved aside and away from him on her knees; her head remained turned, too, and her features were set as though carven out of rosy marble.
She was summoning every atom of resolution, every particle of courage to do what she must do. Every fibre in her revolted with the effort; but she steeled herself, and at last the forced smile was stamped on her lips, and she dared turn her head and meet his burning gaze.
"You frighten me," she said—and her un[pg 333]steady voice was convincing. "A young girl is not courted so abruptly."
"Forgive me," he murmured. "I could not help myself—your neck is so fragrant, so childlike——"
"Then you should treat me as you would a child!" she retorted pettishly. "Amuse me, if you aspire to any comradeship with me. Your behaviour does not amuse me at all."