"But surely you are not so--old-fashioned."
"No. I am perhaps so--new-fashioned that my reason might take your
breath away." He laughed but did not explain.
Nancy sat undecided while the taper burned out futilely. Then she said,
"Of course you are my host--"
"Don't do it for that reason. Do it because"--he stopped, laughed again,
and went on--"because you are a goddess--a woman of a new race--"
With parted lips she looked at him, then tried to wrench herself back to
her attitude of light indifference.
"Oh, we've grown beyond all that."
"All what?"
"Goddess-women. We are just nice and human together."
"You are nice and human. But you are more than that."
Nancy put her unlighted cigarette back in its case. "I'll keep it for
next time," she said, with a touch of defiance.
"There will be no next time," was his secure response, and his eyes held
hers until, with an effort, she withdrew her gaze.
Then he rose, and his men placed deep chairs for us in a sheltered
corner, where we could look out across the blue to the low hills of the
moor. There was a fur rug over my chair, and I sank gratefully into the
warmth of it.
"With a wind like this in the old days," Olaf said, as he stood beside
me looking out over the sparkling water, "how the sails would have been
spread, and now there is nothing but steam and gasoline and
electricity."
"Why don't you have sails then," Nancy challenged him, "instead of
steam?"
"I have a ship. Shall I show you the picture of it?"