The girl's rising color and her low-voiced exclamation warned him again that detached and quite impersonal praises from him were not understood.
"Philippa," he explained with bored but smiling reassurance, "I'm merely telling you what a really pretty girl you are; I'm not paying court to you. Didn't you understand?"
The grey eyes were lifted frankly to his; questioned him in silence.
"In America a man may say as much to a girl and mean nothing more—important," he explained. "I'm not trying to make love to you, Philippa. Were you afraid I was?"
She said slowly:
"I was not exactly—afraid."
"I don't do that sort of thing," he continued pleasantly. "I don't make love to anybody. I'm too busy a man. Also, I would not offend you by talking to you about love."
She looked down at her folded hands. Since she had been with him nothing had seemed very real to her, nothing very clear, except that for the first time in her brief life she was interested in a man on whom she was supposed to be spying.
The Gallic and partly morbid traditions she had picked up in such a girlhood as had been hers were now making for her an important personal episode out of their encounter, and were lending a fictitious and perhaps a touching value to every word he uttered.
But more important and most significant of anything to her was her own natural inclination for him. For her he already possessed immortal distinction; he was her first man.