"Do you know about my parents?" she asked. "They were lost in the Argolis off Cyprus. You have heard. I think they meant that I should go to college—as well as Gerald; I don't know. Perhaps after all it is better for me to do what other young girls do. Besides, I enjoy it; and my mother did, too, when she was my age, they say. She was very much gayer than I am; my mother was a beauty and a brilliant woman. . . . But there were other qualities. I—have her letters to father when Gerald and I were very little; and her letters to us from London. . . . I have missed her more, this winter, it seems to me, than even in that dreadful time—"
She sat silent, chin in hand, delicate fingers restlessly worrying her red lips; then, in quick impulse:
"You will not mistake me, Captain Selwyn! Nina and Austin have been perfectly sweet to me and to Gerald."
"I am not mistaking a word you utter," he said.
"No, of course not. . . . Only there are times . . . moments . . ."
Her voice died; her clear eyes looked out into space while the silent seconds lengthened into minutes. One slender finger had slipped between her lips and teeth; the burnished strand of hair which Nina dreaded lay neglected against her cheek.
"I should like to know," she began, as though to herself, "something about everything. That being out of the question, I should like to know everything about something. That also being out of the question, for third choice I should like to know something about something. I am not too ambitious, am I?"
Selwyn did not offer to answer.
"Am I?" she repeated, looking directly at him.
"I thought you were asking yourself."