'Mark,' said Zita suddenly, 'I want to ask you a question.'
'Say on,' said he, and relaxed the speed at which he was spinning her along, and finally came to a standstill. How pretty she was, with her glowing cheeks, her cherry lips, the light of the winter sun in her soft hazel eyes and in her rich, burnished, chestnut hair! How pretty that hair was now, in some confusion, puffed out of its order, the coppery strands on her brow, one down her cheek! The wildness of her appearance thus untidied by the wind made her more than ever charming.
Mark looked with eyes that could not be satiated with looking.
But it was not merely her beauty that struck him. It was the exuberant happiness that seemed to be bursting forth at her eyes, running out of her little head in every shining hair, glowing in those bright-tinted cheeks, burning in those carnation-red lips.
'Well, my dear little Zita, what is it?'
'Mark, it is something I have thought about and have puzzled over. It seems strange to speak about it now—now when I am so joyous—and it is connected with things so sad to me and to you.'
'But what is it, little rogue?'
'Mark, that terrible night when your father and mine died'—. She paused.
'Well, Zita?'
'Then—before his death, I mean—before the death of my own dear daddy, and I can't say whether it was before or after yours was drowned—I heard such a strange, such an awful sound.'