“Generally it is not,” he said readily, “but now with the soldiers about it is safer.  You see, the soldiers can approach the garden through the open banquet hall”—­and he nodded to the colonnade behind them—­“and though it is forbidden, one cannot foretell their obedience.”

To one who knew those soldiers were chimerical acquiescence was maddening.

“But, dear me, can’t you have some one in the banquet hall to shoo the soldiers away?” Arlee argued persuasively.  “Since the rest of the household has the court, it seems awfully selfish not to let the ladies have the garden for their airing.”

“It may be managed,” he assented.  “It has always been done, for the garden is for the ladies.  Whenever you wish to be in the garden you have but to send word, and the household will remain in the court, as is, indeed, the custom.”

“It would not be so terrible, you know, if a gardener or a donkey-boy did see my face!” laughed Arlee.  “Plenty of them have had that pleasure before this.”

She saw that the young man’s face changed.  Every clear-cut line of it was sharp with repugnance.  “You need not remind me of that,” he said with muffled fierceness, staring down at his plate.

“The danger line!” she thought while shaking her head at him, with the tense semblance of an amused little smile....  “You aren’t the least bit English,” she rebuked, “and I thought you were.”

“Not in that....  And some day England will see her folly.”

“America is seeing her folly now,” thought Arlee with secret bitterness.  But when she raised her eyes they were gently contemplative.  She spoke musingly.

“In things like that you aren’t at all what I thought you were—­about our social customs, I mean.  Yet fundamentally, I think you are.”

“That I am what?”

“What I thought you were.”

He waited, palpably waited, but Arlee continued to peel a tangerine with absorption, and the question had to come from him.  He put it with an air of indolent amusement, yet she felt the intent interest in leash.

“And what did you think I was like, chere petite mademoiselle?”

“Very handsome for one thing, Monsieur!  You see, I owe you a compliment for calling me such a pretty name as this!” With a mischievous smile she touched the roses nodding in her girdle.  “And very autocratic for another, with a very bad temper.  If you can’t get your way you would be shockingly disagreeable!”

“But I always get my way,” he assured her lazily, his teeth showing under his small, black mustache.

“I believe you do!” Ingenuous admiration, simple and sustained, was in the look she gave him.  Her hands were not half so icy now, nor her nerves so tense.  She felt strangely surer of herself; the actual presence of the danger calmed her.  She must make good with this, she thought simply, in strenuous American.

“And yet,” she went on thoughtfully, the pretty picture of fascinated absorption in this most feminine topic—­the dissection of a young man—­“yet, you are chivalrous.  And I think that is the quality we American girls admire most of all.”