“Oh, Will!” she remonstrated. “Don’t tell me you’re such a prig as that. What! if you loved me, if I loved you, you’d give me up, you’d break my heart, just for fear lest idiotic people, whose opinions don’t matter any more than the opinions of so many deep-sea fish, might think you mercenary! When you and I both knew in our own two souls that you really weren’t mercenary’ in the least! You’d pay me a poor compliment, Will. Isn’t it conceivable that a man might love me for myself?” “You state the case too simply. You make no allowances for the shades and complexities of a man’s feelings.” “Bother shades and complexities. Love burns them up. Your shades and complexities are nothing but priggishness and vanity,” she asserted hotly. “But there! I’m actually getting angry over a purely supposititious question. For, of course, we don’t really love each other the least bit, do we, Will?” she asked him softly. He appeared to be giving his whole attention to the rolling of a cigarette; he did not answer. But his fingers trembled, and presently he tore his paper, spilling half the tobacco in his lap. Johannah watched him from eyes full of languid, half mocking, half pensive laughter. “Oh, dear, oh, dear,” she sighed again, by-and-by. He looked at her; and he had to catch his breath. Lying there on the turf, the skirts of her frock flowing round her in a sort of little billowy white pool, her head deep in the scarlet cushion, her black hair straying wantonly where it would about her face and brow, her eyes lambent with that lazy, pensive laughter, one of her hands, pink and white, warm and soft, fallen open on the grass between her and her cousin, her whole person seeming to breathe a subtle scent of womanhood, and the luxury and mystery of womanhood—oh, the sight of her, the sense of her, there in the wide green stillness of the summer day, set his heart burning and beating poignantly. “Oh, dear, oh, dear,” she sighed, “I wish the man I am in love with were only here.” “Oh! You are in love with some one?” he questioned, with a little start. “Rather!” said she. “In love! I should think so. Oh, I love him, love him, love him. Ah, if he were here! He wouldn’t waste this golden afternoon as you’re doing. He’d take my hand—he’d hold it, and press it, and kiss it; and he’d pour his soul out in tumultuous celebration of my charms, in fiery avowals of his passion. If he were here! Ah, me!” “Where is he?” Will asked, in a dry’ voice. “Ah, where indeed? I wish I knew.” “I’ve never heard you speak of him before,” he reflected. “There’s none so deaf as he that will not hear. I’ve spoken of him to you at least a thousand times. He forms the staple of my conversation.” “I must be veryy deaf indeed. I swear this is absolutely news to me.” “Oh, Will, you are such a goose—or such a hypocrite,” said she. “But it’s tea-time. Help me up.”