"I have always been alone."
Warner said patiently:
"I should not do anything without first consulting you."
"I feel very sure that you would not." She smiled at him trustfully, her cheek on her linked fingers; then her gaze grew absent. The last sun ray lingered on her hair, turning it to fiery bronze. Under it her grey eyes gazed absently into the future, filled now, for her, with iridescent castles and peopled with vaguely splendid images—magic scenes that young and lonely hearts evoke out of the very emptiness of their isolation.
And in the center of the phantom pageant always appeared Warner, her friend, endowed with all the mystery and omniscience with which a young girl's heart invests the man who first awakens it to irregularity—who first interferes with the long monotony of its virgin rhythm.
Halkett, a little keener of the two—a little more sensitive, if more reticent—said pleasantly:
"Perhaps you might prefer to dine out here with us, Philippa. The Ha—the class, I mean—banquets and carouses in the dining-room, when it is here."
"Of course I wish to dine with you! I said so to Linette before I came out here. It is all arranged."
Halkett laughed. At the same moment, Linette came out with the tray.
A bright afterglow still lingered in the zenith when their leisurely dinner had ended; and in the garden the mellow light was beginning to make objects exquisitely indistinct.