Roderick followed the direction of her gesture.
"Is that little flower we see outlined against that dark niche," she asked, "as intensely blue as it looks through my veil ?" She spoke apparently with the amiable design of directing the conversation into a less painful channel.
Rowland, from where he stood, could see the flower she meant--a delicate plant of radiant hue, which sprouted from the top of an immense fragment of wall some twenty feet from Christina's place.
Roderick turned his head and looked at it without answering.

At last, glancing round, "Put up your veil!" he said.

Christina complied.

"Does it look as blue now ?" he asked.
"Ah, what a lovely color!" she murmured, leaning her head on one side.
"Would you like to have it ?" She stared a moment and then broke into a light laugh.
"Would you like to have it ?" he repeated in a ringing voice.
"Don't look as if you would eat me up," she answered.

"It 's harmless if I say yes!" Roderick rose to his feet and stood looking at the little flower.