"Yes, indeed. I ran away, as it was. Bromley will have it in for me for dodging him this way."
"He is something much better--he is my friend."
Her hammock was swung diagonally across the quiet corner, and she arranged her pillows so that the shadow of a spreading potted palm came between her eyes and the nearest electric globe.
Jerry Blacklock and the younger Miss Cantrell were pacing a slow sentry march up and down the open space in front of the lounging-chairs; and Ballard waited until they had made the turn and were safely out of ear-shot before he said: "There are times when I have to admit it, reluctantly."
"How ridiculous!" she scoffed. "What is finer than true friendship?"
"Cousin Janet will hear you," she warned. Then she mocked him, as was her custom. "Does that mean that you would like to have me tell you about Mr. Wingfield?"
"How crudely elemental you are to-night! Suppose you ask him?"
"You are trying to give it to me, aren't you?"
She was swinging gently in the hammock, one daintily booted foot touching the floor.
"You are so painfully direct at times," she complained. "It's like a cold shower-bath; invigorating, but shivery. Do you think Mr. Wingfield really cares anything for me? I don't. I think he regards me merely as so much literary material. He lives from moment to moment in the hope of discovering 'situations.'"
"Well,"--assentingly. "I am sure he has chosen a most promising subject--and surroundings. The kingdom of Arcadia reeks with dramatic possibilities, I should say."
Her face was still in the shadow of the branching palm, but the changed tone betrayed her changed mood.
"I have often accused you of having no insight--no intuition," she said musingly. "Yet you have a way of groping blindly to the very heart of things. How could you know that it has come to be the chief object of my life to keep Mr. Wingfield from becoming interested in what you flippantly call 'the dramatic possibilities'?"
"Of course you didn't. Yet it is true. It is one of the reasons why I gave up going with the Herbert Lassleys after my passage was actually booked on the _Carania_. Cousin Janet's party was made up. Dosia and Jerry Blacklock came down to the steamer to see us off. Dosia told me that Mr. Wingfield was included. You have often said that I have the courage of a man--I hadn't, then. I was horribly afraid."