At her question he stopped short in the path.
"Why, I never thought of that way out," he answered, going white and red alternately.
"What a funny man you are!" cried Nina, startled. "Perhaps you will marry the mother yet. How old is she?"
"Oh, yes. She's an American." As if riches and Americans were synonymous.
"I like you better just at present," returned Carleigh.
"Thanks, awfully. But I've told you what woman will stand in the way of your serious views about me. Besides, I'd never dare risk such a man as you. Everything will right itself, some day."
"Ah, you've not told me all the story then?"
"Of course not. I never shall. I never can."
For a few steps they walked on in silence.
"Do tell me your--your story," he faltered. "Tell me what you can--what you'd like to."
"My story? My stories, you mean. I'm all stories." And she laughed her merry laugh.
"Oh, _the_ story!" She paused for the space of a heart-beat, and her eyes were serious. "Even that began with my birth," she continued. "It's rather long, you see, to tell on a short walk. It's a war story. I was born to battle; and not being a man, and medieval, was appointed to eternal combat with myself."
"With victory for the prize," he suggested.
She thought for a second; then dropped her head. "I don't know. No one can tell. Perhaps--perhaps not."
"But you can tell me some of it--me," he insisted.
"But it's so hopeless," she said wearily. "And you're really too young to know what I mean when I talk. Then, too, it's such a horrid story. Just as yours is, you know.
"Mixed love and straight-out killing haven't been respectable since the time when Catherine de' Medici shoved every pleasant way of getting on under a cloud. How I do wish I had lived when you could kill a man by shaking hands! If that were possible now, I know what I'd do to lots of men."
"I'd never shake hands any more. I'd kiss them all instead. It would be so humane and blameless--and nice."
He felt all the blood in him bound out of his heart to meet her whimsy.
"You darling!" he cried ecstatically. "What could be nicer? A fig for your tragedies. We'll just flirt--and--and--"
He seized her and was drawing her into a close embrace. His face was scarlet, his pupils distended.