Broussard, in the friendly shadow of the tea table, held on a moment to Anita's hand.

She looked straight away from Broussard, her red lips smiling at an infatuated second lieutenant on the other side of her, but her cheeks, already of a delicate rose color, hung out the scarlet flag which means, in love, a surrender.

Broussard even felt a faint returning pressure of the fingers, so well screened that only they themselves knew of the meeting of the hands.
Then they all sat down again and the pleasant talk began once more, Anita taking her part with a subdued current of gaiety unusual in her, for, as Mrs.Fortescue was essentially L'Allegro, so Anita was by nature, Il Penseroso.
Once more, when the color-sergeant brought the flag in, and placed it in a corner of the fine drawing-room, all present stood up; then there was much merry chatter and tea and chaff and that universal kindliness which seems to develop around a friendly tea table.

One thing surprised Broussard--not only that Anita appeared quite grown up but that she could talk of many things of which he had never before heard her speak.

As for the Philippines, she had all the lore about them at her finger tips.
Broussard, watching her out of the tail of his eye, saw that she was no longer the adorable child, who lived with her birds and her violin, but an adorable woman, who had learned to think and feel and speak as a woman.