"Did you study abroad?"
"Yes—not long enough."
She seemed rather astonished at this. Amused, he rested both elbows on the parapet, looking at her from between the strong, lean hands that framed his face.
"It was droll—the way I managed to scurry like a jack-rabbit through school and college on nothing a year. I was obliged to hurry post-graduate courses and Europe and such agreeable things. Otherwise I would probably be more interesting to you—"
"You are sufficiently interesting," she said, flushing up at his wilful misinterpretation.
And, as he laughed easily:
"The horrid thing about it is that you are interesting and you know it. All I asked of you was to be seriously interesting to me—occasionally; and instead you are rude—"
"Rude!"
"Yes, you are!—pretending that I was disappointed in you because you hadn't dawdled around Europe for years in the wake of an education. You are, apparently, just about the average sort of man one meets—yet I kicked over several conventions for the sake of exchanging a few premature words with you, knowing all the while I was to meet you later. It certainly was not for your beaux yeux; I am not sentimental!" she added fiercely. "And it was not because you are a celebrity—you are not one yet, you know. Something in you certainly appealed to something reckless in me; yet I did not really feel very sinful when I let you speak to me; and, even in the boat, I admit frankly that I enjoyed every word that we spoke—though I didn't appear to, did I?"
"No, you didn't," he said.