“Young and budding scientist,” said she severely, “you’re a gay deceiver. Is it because you have known me in some former existence that you are able thus accurately to read my character?”
“Well, I knew you wouldn’t stay up there much longer.”
“I’m angry at you; very angry at you. That is, I would be if it weren’t that you really didn’t mean it when you said that you really didn’t want to see my face again.”
“Did any one ever see your face once without wanting to see it again?”
“Ah, bravo!” She clapped her hands gayly. “Marvelous improvement under my tutelage! Where, oh, where is your timidity now?”
“I—I—I forgot,” he stammered, “As long as I don’t think, I’m all right. Now, you—you—you’ve gone and spoiled me.”
“Oh, the pity of it! Let’s find some mild, impersonal topic, then, that won’t embarrass you. What do you do under the shadow of this rock, in a parched land?”
“Work. Besides, it isn’t a parched land. Look on this side.”
Half a dozen steps brought her around the farther angle, where, hidden in a growth of shrubbery, lay a little pool of fairy loveliness,
“That’s my outdoor laboratory.”