“I had hoped,” she smiled, “that you had perhaps remembered me––enough to stop for a word or two some day at tea-time.”
He had had no intention of going; but he said that he had meant to and would surely do so,––the while she was leisurely recognising the lie as it politely uncoiled.
“Why won’t you come?” she asked under her breath.
“I shall certainly–––”
“No; you won’t come.” She seemed amused: “Tell me, are you too a concentrationist?” And her beryl-green eyes barely flickered toward Palla. Then she smiled and laid her hand lightly on her breast: “I, on the contrary, am a Diffusionist. It’s merely a 215 matter of how God grinds the lens. But prisms colour one’s dull white life so gaily!”
“And split it up,” he said, smiling.
“And disintegrate it,” she nodded, “––so exquisitely.”
“Into rainbows.”
“You do not believe that there is hidden gold there?” And, looking at him, she let one hand rest lightly against her hair.
“Yes. I believe it,” he said, laughing at her enchanting effrontery. “But, Marya, when the rainbow goes a-glimmering, the same old grey world is there again. It’s always there–––”