That was plain enough. In her fresh and youthful beauty the only sign of the night's unwisdom was in the scarcely perceptible violet tint under her thick lashes. Her skin was clear and white and dewy fresh, her dark eyes unwearied--her gracefully slender presence fairly fragrant with health and vigour. She seated herself--offered to share with him in dumb appeal, urged him in delicious pantomime, and smiled encouragingly as he reluctantly found a chair beside her and divided the magnificent melon. "Did you have a good time?" he asked, trying not to speak ungraciously. "Y-yes.... It was a silly sort of a time." "Silly?" "I was rather sentimental--with Querida." He said nothing--grimly. "I told you last night, Louis. Why couldn't you see me?" "I was dining out; I couldn't." She sipped her chilled grapefruit meditatively: "I hadn't seen you for a week," she laughed, glancing sideways at him, "and that lonely feeling began about five o'clock; and I called you up at seven because I couldn't stand it.... But you wouldn't see me; and so when Rita and the others came in a big touring car--do you blame me very much for going with them?" "No." Her expression became serious, a trifle appealing: "My room isn't very attractive," she said, timidly. "It is scarcely big enough for the iron bed and one chair--and I get so tired trying to read or sew every evening by the gas--and it's very hot in there." "Are you making excuses for going?" "I do not know.... Unless people ask me, I have nowhere to go except to my room; and when a girl sits there evening after evening alone it--it is not very gay." She tried the rich, luscious melon with much content, and presently her smile came back: "Louis, it was a funny party. To begin we had one of those terrible clambakes--like a huge, horrid feast of the Middle Ages--and it did not agree with everybody--or perhaps it was because we weren't middle-aged--or perhaps it was just the beer. I drank water; so did the beautiful José Querida.... I think he is pretty nearly the handsomest man I ever saw; don't you?" "He's handsome, cultivated, a charming conversationalist, and a really great painter," said Neville, drily. She looked absently at the melon; tasted it: "He is very romantic ... when he laughs and shows those beautiful, even teeth.... He's really quite adorable, Kelly--and so gentle and considerate--" "That's the Latin in him." "His parents were born in New York." She sipped her coffee, tried a pigeon egg, inquired what it was, ate it, enchanted. "How thoroughly nice you always are to me, Kelly!" she said, looking up in the engagingly fearless way characteristic of her when with him. "Isn't everybody nice to you?" he said with a shrug which escaped her notice. "Nice?" She coloured a trifle and laughed. "Not in _your_ way, Kelly. In the sillier sense they are--some of them." "Even Querida?" he said, carelessly.