The girl averted her head coquettishly. For a few minutes they scrubbed away there together, side by side on their knees above the rim of the pool. Then, without warning, his hot, red lips burned her neck. Her swift recoil was also a shudder; her face flushed. "Don’t do that!" she said sharply, straightening up in the grass where she was kneeling. "You are so adorable!" he pleaded in a low, tense voice. There was a long silence. She had moved aside and away from him on her knees; her head remained turned, too, and her features were set as though carven out of rosy marble. She was summoning every atom of resolution, every particle of courage to do what she must do. Every fibre in her revolted with the effort; but she steeled herself, and at last the forced smile was stamped on her lips, and she dared turn her head and meet his burning gaze. "You frighten me," she said--and her unsteady voice was convincing. "A young girl is not courted so abruptly." "Forgive me," he murmured. "I could not help myself--your neck is so fragrant, so childlike----" "Then you should treat me as you would a child!" she retorted pettishly. "Amuse me, if you aspire to any comradeship with me. Your behaviour does not amuse me at all." "We shall become comrades," he said confidently, "and you shall be sufficiently amused." "It requires time for two people to become comrades." "Will you give me an hour this evening?" "What? A rendezvous?" she exclaimed, laughing. "Yes." "You mean somewhere alone with you?" "Will you, Maryette?" "But why? I am not yet old enough for such foolishness. It would not amuse me at all to be alone with you for an hour." She pouted and shrugged and absently plucked a hollow stem from the sedge. "It would amuse me much more to sit here and blow bubbles," she added, clearing the stem with a quick breath and soaping the end of it. Then, with tormenting malice, she let her eyes rest sideways on him while she plunged the hollow stem into the water, withdrew it, dripping, and deliberately blew an enormous golden bubble from the end. "Look!" she cried, detaching the bubble, apparently enchanted to see it float upward. "Is it not beautiful, my fairy balloon?" On her knees there beside the basin she blew bubble after bubble, detaching each with a slight movement of her wrist, and laughing delightedly to see them mount into the sunshine. "You _are_ a child," he said, worrying his red underlip with his teeth. "You’re a baby, after all." She said: "Very well, then, children require toys to amuse them, not sighs and kisses and bold, brown eyes to frighten and perplex them. Have you any toys to amuse me if I give you an hour with me?" "Maryette, I can easily teach you----" "No! Will you bring me a toy to amuse me?--a clay pipe to blow bubbles? I adore bubbles." "If I promise to amuse you, will you give me an hour?" he asked.