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A silence fell between them, broken only by the whirring of Nora's wheel and the robin's chatter before Katrine inquired:
"Are you still bent on that expedition to that world's end?"
"I could," he returned, "be persuaded from it, or at least to postpone it. If by any chance I were invited to luncheon in a certain garden—an old-fashioned garden, with box and peonies, and," he raised his head to look down over the flowers—"and some queer purple things like bells whose name I have forgotten, under a trellis of roses, with—"
"Me," she interrupted, with a laugh. "We'll make a party, as the children say. Nora will give us broiled chicken and yellow wine in the long-necked glasses, and cake with nuts in it, and you," she stopped for a second, the dimple in the left cheek showing itself, "will give all of your nuts to me; for it is well to sacrifice for another," she said, with a laugh, "and exceeding well," she added, "that I should have the nuts."
Having ordered the luncheon, they went together down the gravelled pathway to the grape arbor, which was grown over with sweet, old-fashioned climbing roses, through which the sunlight filtered in wavy lights on the quaint low rocker, the long rattan couch, the pillows of gay hue, the table covered with books and sewing. Frank paused at the archway and looked in.
"I have found it," he said.
"What?" she asked.
"The world's end," he answered.
"You must," she explained, " really to appreciate this place, lie on the couch so that you may see the wistaria on the gray wall. You should then light a cigarette and have the table brought near, that you may ring for what you want." She moved the table toward him as she spoke. "And I will take this chair beside you. If you want me to talk to you I shall do so; if you want me to sing, I will do that; or if the king desires silence"—she made an obeisance before him as of great humility—"I can even accomplish that, though it is difficult for a woman," she added, with a laugh.
It was dangerous repayment of a kindness: this entire forgetfulness of herself in her gratitude to him; this essence of the wine of flattery, of Irish flattery, which has ever a peculiar bouquet of its own.
"You have a good friend in McDermott," Francis said, abruptly.
"Yes; he has been kind to us, most kind," Katrine answered.
"For old sake's sake?" Frank suggested.
"Scarcely for that. We never knew him until father met him quite by accident in New York two years ago."
"Didn't they fight together in India?" Frank inquired.
"In India!" Katrine repeated. "Father was never in India. Will some one have been telling you that McDermott and he fought together in India, Mr. Ravenel?" she asked, in astonishment.
Frank sat upright, regarding her with amazement.
"Didn't your father save his life at Ramazan?"
It was Katrine's turn to be bewildered.
"I never heard of Ramazan," she said. "Where is it?"
"And he was not present at your father's marriage in Italy?"
Katrine shook her head; but to Ravenel's astonishment she began to wear an amused smile as he repeated McDermott's tale to her bit by bit.
"I understand," she explained, "my father saved him from a horrible attack of the measles in New York. They thought for weeks that he would die."
"But why," Frank demanded, "didn't he say just that?"
"He couldn't!" Katrine stated, as simply and uncritically as a child. "You see, he has the soul of an artist, and there's something about a man of thirty dying of measles impossible for the artistic temperament to contemplate. Ah!" she said, with gentle pleading in her voice for an absent friend, "he's the greatest liar as well as the most truthful person alive; but you've got to be Irish to understand how that thing can be. He couldn't say my father saved him from the measles. The story of India sounds better—and no one is hurt. Can't ye understand? The gratitude for service rendered is the great thing; to remember a kindness has been done; and whether he gives as reason for his gratitude Ramazan or the measles, what is the difference? Do you know"—there came an apologetic look and blush to her face as she spoke, "that I myself, when it comes to things of the heart—" she ended the sentence with a laugh and a gesture of self-depreciation. "There was once a little child in Killybegs," she explained, "a girl, who wanted to be a boy, and she cried all of the time because she wasn't. So I told her she was a boy , and it comforted her for quite a year. You see, it made her happy."
"Oh," Francis laughed, "you incomprehensible Celts!"
"Incomprehensible, indeed!" she said. "Incomprehensible!"
A singing voice broke the talk, rolling strongly, vibrantly through the leaves, a lawless, insistent voice, and Dermott McDermott, with the reins loosened on his horse's neck, and his ardent eyes looking upward to heaven's blue, rode by the other side of the privet hedge:
"Katrine," Frank said, as they listened to the singing die away, "what is Dermott McDermott doing in the Carolinas? That story of the Mainwaring titles is nonsense. He is here on some other business."
"I am not sure," she answered. "I cannot be certain, but I think it has something to do with Ravenel. I think it has to do with you."
"With me?" Frank sat erect. "Do you know," he said, after some thought, "absurd as it may seem, Katrine, I think so, too."
The sun was far behind the pines when he rose to leave, flattered, softened, with the remembrance of caressing gray eyes, of a voice full of strange cadence, and speech with quaint humor and dramatic turns to the sentences.
"Good-bye," he said, standing by the boxwood arch. "I am your debtor, Miss Dulany, for one perfectly happy day."
"My debtor!" she repeated, looking at him through sudden tears. "I've known rich men before now, men richer than you, Mr. Ravenel; and great men, though none greater than yourself; and handsome men as well, though here"—and the mutinous humor of her showed in the speech—"I can't truthfully say I've ever seen any handsomer than you are this minute, as you stand looking down at me. It's your eyes, or something in your nature, perhaps, that sets you apart from others in your looks. But be that all as it may, it's neither your riches nor your birth nor your good looks that I am thinking about, but your kind heart. I shall never forget you, never in all my life, for what you've done for me; and if the time ever comes when you need a friend, for sometimes a man needs the help that only a woman can give, will you remember me then, for I'll come from the ends of the earth to serve you?" And before he was aware of such an intention, in an ecstasy of gratitude, she raised his hand to her lips and kissed it.