Page:Herbert Jenkins - The Rain Girl.djvu/204

 "Of course not," she laughed. "I was answering your question."

"Which one?"

"How trying you are, and it's so hot," she protested, fanning herself with her handkerchief. "The one about returning to London, of course. Besides," she added with feminine inconsistency, "the doctor ordered you to stay here."

"Not indefinitely," he objected.

"But you've only been here a week."

"This is the ninth day of my wonder."

"And consequently the last."

He looked across at her, startled in spite of himself, as she sat, looking deliciously cool and provokingly pretty, in a little toque of brilliant colouring above an oatmeal-coloured frock.

"Somewhere in the lap of the ages I shall rest the better for the knowledge that once in my life I had a good time." He smiled at her gravely.

"Why do you say that?" she asked, looking at him with startled eyes. "It sounds so—so" she broke off, unable to find a simile.

For fully a minute he continued to smoke without speaking. At length he said, disregarding her question—

"Hasn't it been said that we never know when we are happy?"

She nodded.

"I have been happy for the last few days," he continued, "and I have been conscious of it every moment of the time."