... I'm getting
down."
She swung herself down into my arms, and stood beside me face to face.
"Where's Cothope?" she asked.
"Gone."
Her eyes flitted to the pavilion and back to me. We stood close
together, extraordinarily intimate, and extraordinarily apart.
"I've never seen this cottage of yours," she said, "and I want to."
She flung the bridle of her horse round the veranda post, and I helped
her tie it.
"Did you get what you went for to Africa?" she asked.
"No," I said, "I lost my ship."
"And that lost everything?"
"Everything."
She walked before me into the living-room of the chalet, and I saw that
she gripped her riding-whip very tightly in her hand. She looked about
her for a moment,--and then at me.
"It's comfortable," she remarked.
Our eyes met in a conversation very different from the one upon our
lips. A sombre glow surrounded us, drew us together; an unwonted shyness
kept us apart. She roused herself, after an instant's pause, to examine
my furniture.
"You have chintz curtains. I thought men were too feckless to have
curtains without a woman.
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