She was remembering that she had gone to him after exchanging a glance with Wildresse, when he had first asked her to dance. But she had needed no further persuasion to sit with him at his table; she had even forgotten her miserable rôle when she asked him to go out to the river with her. The significance of all this, according to her Gallic tradition, was now confronting her, emphasizing the fact that she was still with him.
As she sat there, her hands clasped in her lap, the sunlit reality of it all seemed brightly confused as in a dream—a vivid dream which casts a deeper enchantment over slumber, holding the sleeper fascinated under the tense concentration of the happy spell. Subconsciously she seemed to be aware that, according to tradition, this conduct of hers must be merely preliminary to something further; that, in sequence, other episodes were preparing—were becoming inevitable. And she thought of what he had said about making love.
Folding and unfolding her hands, and looking down at them rather fixedly, she said:
"Apropos of love—I have never been angry because men told me they were in love with me.... Men love; it is natural; they cannot help it. So, if you had said so, I should not have been angry. No, not at all, Monsieur."
"Philippa," he said smilingly, "when a girl and a man happen to be alone together, love isn't the only entertaining subject for conversation, is it?"
"It's the subject I've always had to listen to from men. Perhaps that is why I thought—when you spoke so amiably of my—my——"
"Beauty," added Warner frankly, "—because it is beauty, Philippa. But I meant only to express the pleasure that it gave to a painter—yes, and to a man who can admire without offense, and say so quite as honestly."
The girl slowly raised her eyes.
"You speak very pleasantly to me," she said. "Are other American men like you?"
"You ought to know. Aren't you American?"