"Oh, can't I!" said Dinah. "To have someone in love with you, wanting no one but you, thinking there's no one else in the world like you. Have you never dreamt that such a thing has happened? I have. And then waked up to find everything very flat and uninteresting."
Scott was intent upon fastening an old gold brooch in the red kerchief above her forehead. He did not meet the questioning of her bright eyes.
"No," he said. "I don't think I ever cajoled myself, either waking or sleeping, into imagining that anybody would ever fall in love with me to that extent."
Dinah laughed, her upturned face a-brim with merriment. "If any woman ever wants to marry you, she'll have to do her own proposing, won't she?" she said.
"I think she will," said Scott.
"I wish Rose de Vigne would fall in love with you then," declared Dinah. "Men are always proposing to her, she leads them on till they make perfect idiots of themselves. I think it's simply horrid of her to do it. But she says she can't help being beautiful. Oh, how I wish--" Dinah broke off.
"What do you wish?" said Scott.
She turned her face away to hide a blush. "You must think me very silly and childish. So I am, but I'm not generally so. I think it's in the air here. I was going to say, how I wished I could outshine her for just one night! Isn't that piggy of me? But I am so tired of being always in the shade. She called me 'Poor little Dinah!' only to-night. How would you like to be called that?"
"Most people call me Stumpy," observed Scott, with his whimsical little smile.
"How rude of them! How horrid of them!" said Dinah. "And do you actually put up with it?"
He bent with her over the jewel-case, and picked out the coral chain. "I don't care the toss of a halfpenny," he said.
She gave him a quick, searching glance. "Not really? Not in your secret heart?"
"Not in the deepest depth of my unfathomable soul," he declared.
"Then you're a great man," said Dinah, with conviction.
Scott's laugh was one of genuine amusement. "Oh, does that follow? I've never seen myself in that light before."
But Dinah was absolutely serious and remained so. There was even a touch of reverence in her look. "You evidently don't know yourself in the least," she said. "Anyhow, you've made me feel a downright toad."