He raised his eyes, curiously, in time to intercept hers.

“So—­you did not know me after all, it seems,” she said with a faint smile.  “You never suspected in me a Vierge Rouge, militant, champion of her downtrodden sex, haranguing whomsoever would pay her the fee of his attention.  Did you?”

And as he made no reply:  “Your inference is that I have had some unhappy love affair—­some perilously close escape from—­unhappy matrimony.”  She shrugged.  “As though a girl could plead only a cause which concerned herself....  Tell me what you are thinking?”

She had risen, and he stood up before her, fascinated.

“Tell me!” she insisted; “I shall not let you go until you do!”

“I was thinking about you.”

“Please don’t!...  Are you doing it yet?” closely confronting him, hands behind her.

“Yes, I am,” he said, unable to keep his eyes from her, all her beauty and youth and freshness troubling him, closing in upon him like subtle fragrance in the golden forest dusk.

“Are you still thinking about me?”

“Yes.”

The rare sweet laughter edged her lips, for an instant; then something in his eyes checked her.  Colour and laughter died out, leaving a pale confused smile; and the straight gaze wavered, grew less direct, yet lost not a shade of his expression which also had changed.

Neither spoke; and after a moment they turned away, walking not very near together toward the house.

The sunshine and the open somehow brought relief and the delicate constraint between them relaxed as they sauntered slowly into the house where Shiela presently went away to dress for the Ascott function, and Hamil sat down on the veranda for a while, then retired to undertake the embellishment of his own person.

CHAPTER IX

THE INVASION

They went together in a double chair, spinning noiselessly over the shell road which wound through oleander and hibiscus hedges.  Great orange and sulphur-tinted butterflies kept pace with them as they travelled swiftly southward; the long, slim shadows of palms gridironed the sunny road, for the sun was in the west, and already a bird here and there had ventured on a note or two as prelude to the evening song, and over the ocean wild ducks were rising in clouds, swinging and drifting and settling again as though in short rehearsal for their sunset flight.

“Your hostess is Mrs. Tom O’Hara,” said the girl; “when you have enough of it look at me and I’ll understand.  And if you try to hide in a corner with some soulful girl I’ll look at you—­if it bores me too much.  So don’t sit still with an infatuated smile, as Cecile does, when she sees that I wish to make my adieux.”

“I’m so likely to,” he said, “when escape means that I’ll have you to myself again.”

There was a trifle more significance in the unconsidered speech than he had intended.  The girl looked absently straight in front of her; he sat motionless, uncomfortable at his own words, but too wise to attempt to modify them by more words.