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.