Waist deep in bay-bushes he turned toward her where she sat on the trunk of an oak which had fallen across the stream.  Her arms balanced her body; her ankles were interlocked.  She swung her slim russet-shod feet above the brook and looked at him with a touch of gaminerie new to her and to him.

“Of course it’s amusing to be told you are the only woman in the world,” she said, “particularly when a girl has a secret fear that men don’t consider her quite grown up.”

“You once said,” he began impatiently, “that the idiotic importunities of those men annoyed you.”

“Why do you call them idiotic?”—­with pretence of hurt surprise.  “A girl is honoured—­”

“Oh, bosh!”

“Captain Selwyn!”

“I beg your pardon,” he said sulkily; and fumbled with his reel.

She surveyed him, head a trifle on one side—­the very incarnation of youthful malice in process of satisfying a desire for tormenting.  Never before had she experienced that desire so keenly, so unreasoningly; never before had she found such a curious pleasure in punishing without cause.  A perfectly inexplicable exhilaration possessed her—­a gaiety quite reasonless, until every pulse in her seemed singing with laughter and quickening with the desire for his torment.

“When I pretended I was annoyed by what men said to me, I was only a yearling,” she observed.  “Now I’m a two-year, Captain Selwyn. . . .  Who can tell what may happen in my second season?”

“You said that you were not the—­the marrying sort,” he insisted.

“Nonsense.  All girls are.  Once I sat in a high chair and wore a bib and banqueted on cambric-tea and prunes.  I don’t do it now; I’ve advanced.  It’s probably part of that progress which you are so opposed to.”

He did not answer, but stood, head bent, looping on a new leader.

“All progress is admirable,” she suggested.

No answer.

So, to goad him: 

“There are men,” she said dreamily, “who might hope for a kinder reception next winter—­”

“Oh, no,” he said coolly, “there are no such gentlemen.  If there were you wouldn’t say so.”

“Yes, I would.  And there are!”

“How many?” jeeringly, and now quite reassured.

“One!”

“You can’t frighten me”—­with a shade less confidence.  “You wouldn’t tell if there was.”

“I’d tell you.”

“Me?”—­with a sudden slump in his remaining stock of reassurance.

“Certainly.  I tell you and Nina things of that sort.  And when I have fully decided to marry I shall, of course, tell you both before I inform other people.”

How the blood in her young veins was racing and singing with laughter!  How thoroughly she was enjoying something to which she could give neither reason nor name!  But how satisfying it all was—­whatever it was that amused her in this man’s uncertainty, and in the faint traces of an irritation as unreasoning as the source of it!