The description of the manner in which her evenings were passed did not sound enlivening. He wondered that any girl should submit to these dull conditions, that girls could be found to fill such servile posts. "Do you never get any time off?" he asked. "It's off-time to-day," she admitted, smiling suddenly. "Mrs Graham has a sick headache. When she has a headache no one is allowed near her. Sometimes they last three days. She is subject to them." "Then," he said promptly, in the manner of one making a statement which admits no contradiction, "you can come to-night... Will you?" he added tentatively. "Will I come--on the beach?" she asked in an undecided tone, as though uncertain that she apprehended him rightly. "You mean after dinner?" "Yes," he returned. "It will be jolly if you do." She hesitated; and he noticed in her eyes, before she averted them and looked seaward, a shadow like a tiny doubt passing over the clear surface of her mind. "I... It is a little unusual," she said, the perplexed eyes in the glittering distance. "That's tantamount to a refusal, I suppose?" he said, feeling nettled and unaccountably disappointed. "Perhaps I ought not to have proposed it; but it occurred to me that it would be pleasant. I'm sorry. I didn't wish to embarrass you." Immediately, with his inference of refusal, her disinclination to adopt the suggestion faded. She wanted to come. He had said he thought it would be pleasant; she, more positive in her opinions, knew that it would be pleasant, wonderfully pleasant. Very few pleasant adventures happened in her life; it was ridiculous to reject anything that offered for so feeble a reason as a sense of the unusual. Was that not after all recommendation in itself? She sought about in her mind for words in which to convey to him without appearing eager that she would like to come, but her vocabulary failed her; seldom had she been at so great a loss for words. Unexpectedly he came to her relief. "I am infected with the holiday mood," he said. "I want to enjoy things. And my holiday is very near the finish. I may leave any day-- perhaps to-morrow. You too must know the holiday mood. We don't leave it altogether behind with our childhood. I want to talk to you. We happened upon the acquaintance by accident--it is part of the holiday. That must be my apology for seeming intrusive." She turned towards him deliberately with a friendlier look in her eyes. "I think my gaucherie needs some apologia too," she confessed. "Why not make it in the form of a concession?" he suggested hopefully, and experienced a curious satisfaction when suddenly she laughed.