Love is for Ever by Barbara Rowan

like this, could I?”
    “No, perhaps not.” His eyes were on the road ahead, and he still would not look round at her.
    “Perhaps another time—” she began diffidently. He looked round at her then, and his eyes smiled all at once. The vividness of that smile actually warmed her like the sunshine, and she found the way his white teeth flashed as his lips parted over them most attractive.
    “Of course! This afternoon, if you are an extremely good girl, and promise never to make me endure another twenty minutes of waiting for you such as I endured this morning? I really had the feeling that you had been swallowed up by an ogre or abducted, or something of the sort.”
    “But twenty minutes is not really a very great length of time. And I might have been having my hair cut.”
    “The hairdresser was closed,” he remarked.
    “Oh, so you found that out?”
    “Yes; and I also found out that you had been simply prowling round, and then all at once you disappeared.”
    “Oh, dear!” she exclaimed. “In England I disappear so often, when the mood takes me, that it would give some of these people a heart attack.”
    “Including me?”
    “I can’t think why you should have a heart attack on my account.”
    “Can't you?” swerving to avoid a car that swept past them on the road. “Well, I’ ll tell you something—I don’t like the thought of the kind of life you live in England! I don’t like the thought of it at all! In fact, I disapprove of it most strongly!”
    Jacqueline once again said nothing for several minutes; and then she returned to a subject they were discussing earlier.
    “You said that you would take me—this afternoon—to San Agariu?”
    “Yes; after tea, when it is a little cooler. Will that suit you?”
    “It will suit me excellently. But, what about—what about Martine—?”
    “Martine?” he echoed, and now it was his voice that was very dry, while all at once a curious kind of taunting smile visited the corners of his shapely mouth. “Martine is going to submit herself to the hands of Juanita after tea. She wishes to gild the lily a little—and in her case any attempt at beautifying herself is gilding the lily, don’t you agree?—because we are going out for the evening. You, and Dr. Barr, are going out for the evening, too. We are all four going together to a certain rather popular local night-spot, where we shall dine, watch a cabaret, perhaps, and dance—that is, of course, if you care for dancing?”
    “I haven’t danced very much since my schooldays,” Jacqueline admitted.
    “But you enjoy it?”
    “Oh, yes, I enjoy it.” And then, all at once, a tiny glow of pleasure appeared in her face, not so much because of the thought of the evening ahead of her, but because an evening of the type he had planned was an extremely rare thing in her life—in fact, she had never actually enjoyed such an evening. An odd young man had taken her to the theatre occasionally, and even out to dinner—but not dinner at a restaurant where one watched a cabaret, and then danced. “I think,” she said, with a sudden, impulsive note of enthusiasm in her voice, “that it will be very nice!”
    “Because you will be able to dance with Dr. Barr?”
    She looked at him sideways, and her look was heavy with disapproval.
    “ Touche .” he exclaimed, and then laughed softly, and she laughed back, and all at once it seemed that they were on excellent and quite understanding terms with one another.
    When they got back to the Villa Cortina they were both amazed to make the discovery that the Senora Cortina, dressed in one of her stiffest gowns, with jet bracelets on her wrists and brooches pinned to the front of her dress, and her best lace mantilla hiding her silvery hair, was ensconced in the patio in one of the deep wicker chairs, with Tia Lola beside her doing some complicated drawn-thread work.
    Jacqueline, once Dominic had helped her from the car, went forward at once to say how delighted she