“Don’t you, Sweetness? Don’t you understand why you’ve always been exactly what you appear like at this moment?”
She looked at him with her lovely, uncertain smile:
“I’ve always been myself, I suppose. You are teasing me dreadfully!”
He laughed in a nervous, excited way, not like himself:
“You bet you have always been yourself, Sweetness!—in spite of everything you’ve always been yourself. I am very slow in discovering it. But I think I realise it now.”
“Please,” she remonstrated, “you are laughing at me and I don’t know why. I think you’ve been talking nonsense and expecting me to pretend to understand.... If you don’t stop laughing at me I shall retire to my room and—and——”
“What, Sweetness?” he demanded, still laughing.
“Change to a cooler gown,” she said, humorously vexed at her own inability to threaten or punish him for his gaiety at her expense.
“All right; I’ll change too, and we’ll meet in the music-room!”
She considered him askance: