A second later she looked up in some alarm.  He was silent—­she had somehow said the awkward thing again I Nina’s heart fluttered nervously.

But what she saw reassured her.  Royal Blondin had squared himself about, and had folded his arms, and was staring darkly into space.

“How I knew it!” he said in a half-whisper, as if to himself, after a full half-minute of silence that thrilled Nina to the soul.  “Child, I don’t know!  Some day you and I will read books together—­wonderful books!  And then perhaps we will begin to understand the cosmic secret—­why your soul reaches out to mine—­ why I not only want to know you better, but why it is my solemn obligation to take the exquisite thing your coming into my life may mean to us both!  You’re only a child,” he went on, in a lighter tone, “and I can read those big eyes of yours, and can see that I’m frightening you!  Well, this much remains.  You and I have somehow found each other in all this wilderness of lies and affectations, and we’re going to be friends, aren’t we?”

“I—­hope we are!” Nina said, clearing her throat, with a bashful laugh.

“You know we are!” Royal Blondin amended.  And in a musing tone he added:  “I’m afraid I was a little bitter a few hours ago.  And then I saw you, just an honest, brave, bewildered little girl, wondering why the deuce they all make such a fuss about nothing—­ clothes and bridge parties and dinners—­”

“They never say anything worth while!” Nina said, with daring.  There was exquisite homage in the dropped, listening head, the eyes that smiled so close to her own.  “But if I tell Mother that, she thinks I’m crazy!” she added, lapsing into the school vernacular against a desperate effort to sustain the conversation at his level.

“Because you’re a little natural rebel,” interpreted the man, smilingly.  “And that’s the price we pay for it!”

“I’m afraid I’ve always been a rebel, then!” confessed Nina.

“Yes, those eyes of yours say that,” Blondin conceded, sadly.  “And it doesn’t make for happiness, Little Girl!” he warned her.

Nina narrowed her eyes, and stared into the green garden.  She was not wearing her glasses to-day, and hers were fine eyes, albeit a trifle prominent, and with a somewhat strained expression.

“Oh, I know that!” she said.  “Mother and Father,” she confided, with the merciless calm of seventeen, “they’d like me to be exactly like all the other girls, flirting and dressing, and rushing about all day and all night!  But oh—­how I hate it!  Oh, I like the girls and boys—­truly I do, and I am popular with them all, I know that!  But ’cases’!” said Nina with scorn.

“Dear Heaven!” Royal said, under his breath.  “No—­no—­no—­that’s not for you!” he murmured.  “And yet—­” and he turned upon her a look that Nina was to remember with a thrill in the waking hours of the summer night—­“and yet, is it kindness to wake you up, child?” he mused.  “Is it right to show you the full beauty of that questing soul of yours?”