"Yes, I do," he said. "I've made two exhibitions of myself since I knew you—"
"One, Mr. Hamil. Please recollect that I am scarcely supposed to know how many exhibitions of yourself you may have made before we were formally presented."
She stood still under a tree which drooped like a leaf-tufted umbrella, and she said, swinging her racket: "You will always have me at a disadvantage. Do you know it?"
"That is utterly impossible!"
"Is it? Do you mean it?"
"I do with all my heart—"
"Thank you; but do you mean it with all your logical intelligence, too?"
"Yes, of course I do."
She stood, head partly averted, one hand caressing the smooth, pale-yellow fruit which hung in heavy clusters around her. And all around her, too, the delicate white blossoms poured out fragrance, and the giant swallow-tail butterflies in gold and black fluttered and floated among the blossoms or clung to them as though stupefied by their heavy sweetness.
"I wish we had begun—differently," she mused.