“Well, I don't know,” said Leila thoughtfully. “Sometimes people whose walk is a gracefully languid saunter develop adipose tissue after forty.”
“Nonsense! Really, Leila, do you think he walks like a perfectly well man?”
“He may be coming down with whooping-cough—”
Sylvia rose indignantly, but Leila pulled her back to the sun-warmed marble bench:
“A girl in love loses her sense of humour temporarily. Sit down, you little vixen!”
“Leila, you laugh at everything when I don't feel like it.”
“I'm not in love, and that's why.”
“You are in love!”
Leila looked at her, then under her breath: “In love, am I—with the whole young world ringing with the laughter I had forgotten the very sound of? Do you call that love?—with the sea and sky laughing back at me, and the wind in my ears fairly tremulous with laughter? Do you, who look out upon the pretty world so seriously through those sea-blue eyes of yours, think that I can be in love?”
“Oh, Leila, a girl's happiness is serious enough, isn't it? Dear, it frightens me! I was so close to losing it—once.”