As dinner proceeded she grew shyer than a chit of sixteen.

Over the quails a great silence reigned.

Hers she could not touch, but she watched him fork, as it seemed to her, one after the other, whole, down his throat: and she adored him for it.

It was her ideal of manly gusto.

She nearly wept into her _Fraises Diane_--vast craggy strawberries (in March) rising from a drift of snow impregnated by all the distillations of all the flowers of all the summers of all the hills--because she would have given her soul to sit beside him on the table with the bowl on her lap and feed him with a tablespoon and, for her share of it, lick the spoon after his every mouthful.