Page:Georgie by Dorothea Deakin, 1906.djvu/184

"Georgie" Georgie stayed. Diana's young brothers were in bed. Diana's parents dozed in the drawing-room. For two hours she talked to Georgie by the hall-fire of many things; of love a little; of Diana a little; of Georgie and Georgie's interests and occupations a good deal. To her, of course, they were quite enthralling because she was in love with him; and for him to be beside her, confiding his boyish and athletic dreams was still rapture. It was one of Georgie's charming ways to make you feel that you, out of the whole world, were quite the only one to whom he had chosen to unlock his heart; the only one who ever had understood, or been asked to understand the deep and sacred recesses of his soul. Diana felt the delicate flattery of this most keenly.

"There isn't another full-back in the north, just now," he said modestly. "Chaps are getting old, and crocked, don't you see, and there aren't any young ones coming on—"

"Except you, Georgie." 168