‘Oh, some of them aren’t bad,’ she said.  ‘Wait, I’ll read you one.’

‘Then you know English?’

‘A leetle.  Bot the one I shall read is in Franch.’

And then she read out, in an enchanting voice, one of his own French sonnets.  ‘That isn’t bad,’ she added.  ’Do you think it hopelessly bad?’

‘It shows promise, perhaps—­when you read it.’

’It is strange, though, that it should have been written by a man who had never been in love.’

’Imagination!  Upon my word, I never had been.  Besides, the idea is stolen.  It’s almost a literal translation from Rossetti.  What with a little imagination and a little ingenuity, one can do wonderfully well on other people’s experience.’

‘I don’t believe you.  You have been in love a hundred times.’

‘Never.’

‘Never?  Not even with Helene de la Granjolaye de Ravanches?’

‘Oh, I don’t count my infancy.  Never with anybody else.’

‘It’s very strange,’ she said.  ‘Tell me some more about her.’

‘Oh, bother her.’

’I suppose when they carried you off to Paris you had a tearful parting?  Did you kick and scream and say you wouldn’t go?’

‘Why do you always make me talk about the Queen?’

’She interests me.  And when you talk about the Queen, I rather like you.  It is nice to see that there was a time when you were capable of an emotion.’

‘You fancy I’m incapable now?’

‘Tell me about your leave-taking, your farewells.’

‘Bother our farewells.’

‘They must have been heart-rending?’

‘Probably.’

‘Don’t you remember?’

‘Oh, yes, I remember.’

’Go on.  Don’t make me drag it from you by inches.  Tell it to me in a pretty melodious narrative.  Either that, or—­’ she touched her whistle.

‘That’s barefaced intimidation.’

She raised the whistle to her lips.

‘Stay, stay!’ he cried, ‘I yield.’

‘I wait,’ she answered.

He bent his brows for an instant, then looked up smiling.  ’If it puts you to sleep, you’ll know whom to blame.’

‘Yes, yes, go on,’ she said impatiently.

’Dear me, there’s nothing worth telling.  It was a few weeks after my grandmother’s death.  We were going to Paris the next day.  Her father drove over, with her, to say good-bye.  Whilst he was with my people in the drawing-room, she and I walked in the garden.—­I say, this is going to become frightfully sentimental, you know.  Sure you want it?’

‘Go on.  Go on.’

’Well, we walked in the garden; and she was crying, and I was beseeching her not to cry.  She wore one of her white frocks, with a red sash, and her hair fell down her back below her waist.  I was holding her hand.  “Don’t cry, don’t cry.  I’ll come back as soon as I’m a man, and marry you in real earnest!” I promised her.’  He paused and laughed.