“Put your arm about me, dear.”
“What a boy he is!” she murmured, gazing up into the starry clearness.
Overhead a full moon, a moon of circumstance, rode high in the sky, defining phantasmally far off, the violet-farded hills beyond the town.
“To be out there among the silver bean-fields!” he said.
“Yes, Yousef,” she sighed, starting at a Triton’s face among the trailing ivy on the castle wall. Beneath it, half concealed by water-flags, lay a miniature lake: as a rule now, nobody went near the lake at all, since the Queen had called it ‘appallingly smelly,’ so that, for rendezvous, it was quite ideal.
“Tell me, Yousef,” she presently said, pausing to admire the beautiful shadow of an orange-tree on the path before them: “tell me, dear, when Life goes like that to one—what does one do!!”
He shrugged. “Usually nothing,” he replied, the tip of his tongue (like the point of a blade) peeping out between his teeth.
“Ah, but isn’t that being strong?” she said half-audibly, fixing her eyes as though fascinated upon his lips.
“Why,” he demanded with an engaging smile that brought half-moons to his hollow cheeks: “What has the world been doing to Rara?”
“At this instant, Yousef,” she declared, “it brings her nothing but Joy!”