"Christine," he said under his breath.
"Are we free to speak to each other?" she faltered.
"Thank God, yes!"
"Thank God," she whispered.
But for a long, long while they did not use the inestimable privilege of free, articulate speech. There seemed to be no need of it further than apparently irrelevant fragments such as, "My darling!" and, "Oh, Billy, if you only knew!"
Far away beyond them Diana came out on the terrace with young Wallace, and gazed very earnestly down at the rose garden.
"Shall we walk there?" he said persuasively.
"'Oh, dear,' she said, 'there's somebody down there already.'"
Suddenly Diana's face sparkled. "Oh, dear," she said, "there's somebody down there already—two of them! And—and it looks to me as though they were spooning. What a world this is, Mr. Wallace! I think I'd better go in and play bottle pool."