"And what, I wonder," she asked, with the faintest quiver of her cherry-coloured lips, "would you like to know ?" "Oh, everything!" he replied unhesitatingly.

There was no longer in his mind the slightest wish to avoid the approaching flirtation.

On the contrary, he felt he should welcome it, if she would only continue to look like this.

She was not beautiful--yet he realized that she did not need beauty when she could play so easily with a look or a smile on the heartstrings.

A rush of tenderness overwhelmed his reserve at the very instant when her lashes trembled and drooped, and she murmured in a whisper that enchanted him: "Oh, but everything is too little." Though it was only the old lure of youth and sex, he felt that it was as divinely fresh and wonderful as first love.
"Is it too little ?" he asked, and his voice sounded so far off that it was faint in his ears.
She raised her lashes and gave him a glance charged with meaning.