Three Weeks

Then he looked, his big blue eyes still cloudy with a mist of shame.

"You must tell me why you were upset, baby--Paul!"

How often she said his name! lingering over it as if it were music. It thrilled him every time.

Then he gained courage.

"But how did you know anything about it--or what I had--or what I drank? You never once raised your eyelids all the time!"

"Perhaps I can see through them when I want to--who knows!" and she laughed.

"And you wanted to--wanted to see through them?"

He was gazing at her now, and she suddenly looked down, while the most beautiful transparent pink flushed her soft white cheeks, turning her into a tender girl almost. The change was so sudden, it startled Paul, and emboldened him.

"You wanted to!" he repeated in a glad voice. "You wanted to see me?"

"Yes," she whispered, and she looked up at him, but this time there was mischief in her eyes.

"Is that why you sighed then among the ivy? What made you sigh?"

She paused a moment, and then she said slowly: "A number of things. You seemed so young, and so beautiful, and so--asleep."

"Indeed I wasn't asleep!" Paul exclaimed. "It would take a great deal more port than that to make me go to sleep. I was thinking of--" And then he saw she had not meant that kind of sleep, and felt a fool--and wondered.

She helped him out.

"All this time you have not told me why you were upset--upset enough to drink bad port. That was naughty of you, Paul."

"I was upset--over you. I was angry because I was so interested--" and he reddened again.

She leant back among the purple cushions, her figure so supple in its lines, it made him think of a snake. She half closed her eyes again--and she spoke low in a dreamy voice: "It was fate, Paul. I knew it when I entered the room. I felt it again among the green trees, and so I ran from you--but to-night it is plus fort que moi--so I called you to come in."

"I am so glad--so glad," said Paul.

She remained silent. Her eyes in their narrowed lids gleamed at him, seeming to penetrate into his very soul. And now he noticed her mouth again. It neither drooped nor smiled, it was straight, and chiselled and strong, and small rather, and the lower lip was rounded and slightly cleft in the centre. A most appetising red flower of a mouth.