They both laughed a little.
She said, still looking at him, and at first speaking as though to herself:
“Of course, you are that same, delightful Garry! My youthful American accomplice!... Quite unspoiled, still, but very, very irresponsible ... like all painters—like all students. And the mischief which is in me recognised the mischief in you, I suppose.... I did surprise you that night, didn’t I?... And what a night! What a moon! And how we danced there on the wet lawn until my skirts and slippers and stockings were drenched with dew!... And how we laughed! Oh, that full-hearted, full-throated laughter of ours! How wonderful that we have lived to laugh like that! It is something to remember after death. Just think of it!—you and I, absolute strangers, dancing every dance there in the drenched grass to the music that came through the open windows.... And do you remember how we hid in the flowering bushes when my sister and the others came out to look for me? How they called, ‘Nihla! Nihla! Little devil, where are you?’ Oh, it was funny—funny! And to see him come out on the lawn—do you remember? He looked so fat and 49 stupid and anxious and bad-tempered! And you and I expiring with stifled laughter! And he, with his sash, his decorations and his academic palms! He’d have shot us both, you know....”
They were laughing unrestrainedly now at the memory of that impossible night a year ago; and the girl seemed suddenly transformed into an irresponsible gamine of eighteen. Her eyes grew brighter with mischief and laughter—laughter, the greatest magician and doctor emeritus of them all! The immortal restorer of youth and beauty.
Bluish shadows had gone from under her lower lashes; her eyes were starry as a child’s.
“Oh, Garry,” she gasped, laying one slim hand across his on the table-cloth, “it was one of those encounters—one of those heavenly accidents that reconcile one to living.... I think the moon had made me a perfect lunatic.... Because you don’t yet know what I risked.... Garry!... It ruined me—ruined me utterly—our night together under the June moon!”
“What!” he exclaimed, incredulously.
But she only laughed her gay, undaunted little laugh:
“It was worth it! Such moments are worth anything we pay for them! I laughed; I pay. What of it?”
“But if I am partly responsible I wish to know——”