Christie shrugged her thin shoulders. “My mother used to tell me,” she said, “that all angels could turn into demons, and all demons could turn into angels.”

“Merlin and his mother!” he threw out; but his face was as grave as her own. “Christie!” he cried suddenly, after a pause, “why couldn’t you and I have a day off together, away from here somewhere? Couldn’t we go down to Weymouth, for instance? Say next Sunday, when the wedding’s over? Gerda’s mother always likes to have her come round sometime on Sunday; so we shouldn’t feel she was⁠—”

He was interrupted by a querulous voice calling Christie’s name from the bottom of the stairs.

After what he had read in that exercise-book he had a funny shyness about catching the girl’s eye. But she swept this aside with sublime unconsciousness. He couldn’t tell whether she even felt his embarrassment.