And the Boy felt his blood tingle again at the memory of it.

“But what did you say, Monsieur Zalenska—­pardon me—­Paul, I mean,” and she laughed again, “what did you say as you rode home again?”

The Boy shook his head with affected contrition.

“Unfit to tell a lady!” he said.

And the girl laughed again, pleased by his frankness.

“Vowed eternal vengeance upon my luckless head, I suppose!”

“Oh, not so bad as that, I think,” said Paul, pretending to reflect upon the matter—­“I am sure it was not quite so bad as that!”

“It would hardly have done, would it, to vow what you were not at all sure you would ever be able to fulfil?  Take my advice, and never bank a sou upon the move of any woman!”

“You’re not a woman,” he laughed in her eyes; “you’re just an abbreviation!”

But Opal was not one whit sensitive upon the subject of her height.  Not she!

“Well, some abbreviations are more effective than the words they stand for,” she retorted.  “I shall cling to the flattering hope that such may be my attraction to the reader whose ‘only books are woman’s looks!’”

“But why did you run away?”

“Just—­because!” Then, after a pause, “Why did you follow?”

“I don’t know, do you?  Just—­because, I suppose!”

And then they both laughed again.

“But I know why you ran.  You were afraid!” said Paul.

Her eyes flashed and there was a fine scorn in her tones.

“Afraid—­of what, pray?”

“Of being caught—­too easily!  Come, now—­weren’t you?”

“I wouldn’t contradict you for the world, Paul.”

She lingered over his name with a cadence in her tone that made it almost a caress.  It thrilled him again as it had from the beginning.

“But I’ll forgive you for running away from me, since I am so fortunate as to be with you now where you can’t possibly run very far!  Strange, isn’t it, how Fate has thrown us together?”

“Very!”

There was a dry sarcasm in the tones, and a mockery in the glance, that told him she was not blind to his manoeuvres.  Their eyes met and they laughed again.  Truly, life just then was exceedingly pleasant for the two on the deck of the Lusitania.

“But I was looking for you before that, Opal—­long before that—­weeks!”

The girl was truly surprised now and turned to him wonderingly.  Then, without question, he told her of his overhearing her at the garden party—­what a long time ago it seemed!—­and his desire, ever since, to meet her.

He told her, too, of his hearing her laugh at the theatre that night; but the girl was silent, and said not a word of having seen him there.  Confidences were all right for a man, she thought, but a girl did well to keep some things to herself.

He did not say that he was deliberately following her to America, but the girl had her own ideas upon the subject and smiled to herself at the lively development of affairs since that tiresome garden party she had found so unbearable.  Here was an adventure after her own heart.