When she had regained her composure, and her voice was under command,
she straightened up, face averted.

"You are quite perfect, Mr. Hamil; you have not hurt me with one
misguided and well-intended word. That is exactly as it should be
between us--must always be."

"Of course," he said slowly.

She nodded, still looking away from him. "Let us each enjoy our own
griefs unmolested. You have yours?"

"No, Shiela, I haven't any griefs."

"Come to me when you have; I shall not humiliate you with words to shame
your intelligence and my own. If you suffer you suffer; but it is well
to be near a friend--not _too_ near, Mr. Hamil."

"Not too near," he repeated.

"No; that is unendurable. The counter-irritant to grief is sanity, not
emotion. When a woman is a little frightened the presence of the
unafraid is what steadies her."

She looked over her shoulder into the water, reached down, broke off a
blossom of wild hyacinth, and, turning, drew it through the button-hole
of his coat.

"You certainly are very sweet to me," she said quietly. And, laughing a
little: "The entire family adores you with pills--and I've now decorated
you with the lovely curse of our Southern rivers. But--there are no such
things as weeds; a weed is only a miracle in the wrong place....
Well--shall we walk and moralise or remain here and make cat-cradle
conversation?... You are looking at me very solemnly."

"I was thinking--"

"What?"

"That, perhaps, I never before knew a girl as well as I know you."

"Not even Miss Suydam?"

"Lord, no! I never dreamed of knowing her--I mean her real self. You
understand, she and I have always taken each other for granted--never
with any genuine intimacy."

"Oh! And--this--ours--is genuine intimacy?"

"Is it not?"

For a moment her teeth worried the bright velvet of her lip, then
meeting his gaze:

"I mean to be--honest--with you," she said with a tremor in her voice;
but her regard wavered under his. "I mean to be," she repeated so low he
scarcely heard her. Then with a sudden animation a little strained:
"When this winter has become a memory let it be a happy one for you and
me. And by the same token you and I had better think about dressing. You
don't mind, do you, if I take you to meet Mrs. Ascott?--she was Countess
de Caldelis; it's taken her years to secure her divorce."

Hamil remembered the little dough-faced, shrimp-limbed count when he
first came over with the object of permitting