“Well, Georgie?”
“Well, Dick?”
Georgia’s eyes danced with merriment, for Dick was lying in wait for her on the verandah, with a bunch of roses in his hand. Kubbet-ul-Haj roses are not roses of Damascus, or of Kashmir, or of any other locality famous for the culture of the plant; but poor as they were, they were flowers, and of flowers the prisoners at the Mission had seen but few of late. He held them out to her with quite unusual timidity.
“Will you have them?” he asked, somewhat shyly.
“Of course I will, Dick. Thank you so much.” She took them from his hand, kissed them, and fastened them in her dress. “Are you satisfied now?” she asked, smiling.
“Satisfied!” he said, looking at her admiringly. “I feel now that what happened last night was a reality.”
“Why, had you begun to hope it was a dream?”
“It might have been merely imagination—too good to be true. Stratford has just been declaring that I was mad last evening. He says that I wanted to sit up all night and talk, and that he had to turn me out of his room by main force.”
“Poor fellow! Were you trying to drown the remembrance of what had happened?”
“Drown it, indeed! burn it in, more likely. I can’t imagine how you ever came to—Georgie, there’s one thing that puzzles me still. Why were you so angry because Stratford went to the Palace instead of me? I did all I could to go, of course, because I wanted to do something for you; but why did you mind so much?”