But she continued moving along among the bushes, pinching back here, snipping, trimming, clipping there; and after a while she had wandered quite beyond speaking distance; and, at leisurely intervals she straightened up and turned to look back across the roses at him--quiet, unsmiling gaze in exchange for his unchanging eyes, which never left her. She was at the farther edge of the rose garden now where a boy knelt, weeding; and Selwyn saw her speak to him and give him her basket and shears; and saw the boy start away toward the house, leaving her leaning idly above the sun-dial, elbows on the weather-beaten stone, studying the carved figures of the dial. And every line and contour and curve of her figure--even the lowered head, now resting between both hands--summoned him. She heard his step, but did not move; and when he leaned above the dial, resting on his elbows, beside her, she laid her finger on the shadow of the dial. "Time," she said, "is trying to frighten me. It pretends to be nearly five o'clock; do you believe it?" "Time is running very fast with me," he said. "With me, too; I don't wish it to; I don't care for third speed forward all the time." He was bending closer above the stone dial, striving to decipher the inscription on it: "Under blue skies My shadow lies. Under gray skies My shadow dies. "If over me Two Lovers leaning Would solve my Mystery And read my Meaning, --Or clear, or overcast the Skies-- The Answer always lies within their Eyes. Look long! Look long! For there, and there alone Time solves the Riddle graven on this Stone!" Elbows almost touching they leaned at ease, idly reading the almost obliterated lines engraved there. "I never understood it," she observed, lightly scornful. "What occult meaning has a sun-dial for the spooney? _I'm_ sure I don't want to read riddles in a strange gentleman's optics." "The verses," he explained, "are evidently addressed to the spooney, so why should you resent them?" "I don't. . . . I can be spoons, too, for that matter; I mean I could once." "But you're past spooning now," he concluded. "Am I? I rather resent your saying it--your calmly excluding me from anything I might choose to do," she said. "If I cared--if I chose--if I really wanted to--" "You could still spoon? Impossible! At your age? Nonsense!" "It isn't at all impossible. Wait until there's a moon, and a canoe, and a nice boy who is young enough to be frightened easily!" "And I," he retorted, "am too old to be frightened; so there's no moon, no canoe, no pretty girl, no spooning for me. Is that it, Eileen?" "Oh, Gladys and Sheila will attend to you, Captain Selwyn." "Why Gladys Orchil? Why Sheila Minster? And why _not_ Eileen Erroll?" "Spoon? With _you_!" "You are quite right," he said, smiling; "it would be poor sport."