She looked at him with her lovely, uncertain smile:
"I've always been myself, I suppose. You are teasing me dreadfully!"
He laughed in a nervous, excited way, not like himself:
"You bet you have always been yourself, Sweetness!--in spite of everything you've always been _yourself_. I am very slow in discovering it. But I think I realise it now."
"Please," she remonstrated, "you are laughing at me and I don't know why. I think you've been talking nonsense and expecting me to pretend to understand.... If you don't stop laughing at me I shall retire to my room and--and----"
"What, Sweetness?" he demanded, still laughing.
"Change to a cooler gown," she said, humorously vexed at her own inability to threaten or punish him for his gaiety at her expense.
"All right; I'll change too, and we'll meet in the music-room!"
"Will you be more respectful to me, Garry?"
But when he entered the music-room half an hour later, Dulcie was seated demurely before the piano, and when he came and stood behind her she dropped her head straight back and looked up at him.
"I had a wonderful icy bath," she said, "and I'm ready for anything. Are you?"
She straightened up, gazed silently at the piano for a few moments; sounded a few chords. Then her fingers wandered uncertainly, as though groping for something that eluded them--something that they delicately sought to interpret. But apparently she did not discover it; and her search among the keys ended in a soft chord like a sigh. Only her lips could have spoken more plainly.
At that moment Westmore and Thessalie came in breezily and remained to gossip a few minutes before bathing and changing.
"Play something jolly!" said Westmore. "One of those gay Irish things, you know, like 'The Honourable Michael Dunn,' or 'Finnigan's Wake,' or----"
"I don't know any," said Dulcie, smiling. "There's a song called 'Asthore.' My mother wrote it----"
The girl ran her fingers over the keys musingly:
"I'll remember it presently. I know one or two old songs like 'Irishmen All.' Do you know that song?"
And she sang it in her gay, unembarrassed way:
"Warm is our love for the island that bore us, Ready are we as our fathers before us, Genial and gallant men, Fearless and valiant men, Faithful to Erin we answer her call. Ulster men, Munster men, Connaught men, Leinster men, Irishmen all we answer her call!"