They faced each other with eyes either angry or full of a tumultuous passion an onlooker would have been puzzled to name.
"Stop what?"
"Calling him darling. I won't have it."
Nan found this truly funny, and broke into a laugh.
"Do you know," she said, "how every talk of ours ends? Rookie! It always comes round to him. I call him darling and you won't have it. But you'll have to."
"No," said Dick, "I won't have it. Put that in your pipe and smoke it. You little devil! I believe you do it to work me up. That's all right if it stopped there. But it won't. Some day he'll hear you and then——!"
She was flaming again.
"Hear me? Hear me call him darling? Why, he's heard it so often it's no more to him than your calling him Jack. But if he asked me what I meant by it! do you know what would happen then?"
"What would?"
"Then," said Nan enigmatically, "I should tell him, that's all."