She sprang up. “I did not. I never said a word like it. If a stenographer had been here, the record would bear me out. You inferred it, I dare say. Besides, what could I do? Even Nancy herself told us no one would believe us unless I accepted you—at least for a time.”
“For what time?”
“Oh, don’t let us cross bridges until we get to them. We are hardly engaged yet—Max! I must practise calling you Max, mustn’t I?” In attempting to repress an irrepressible smile she developed an unknown dimple in her left cheek. The sight of it made his tone particularly relentless as he answered:
“If by the fifteenth of this month you have not broken this engagement, I’ll announce its termination myself.”
“And you,” she went on, as if he had not spoken, “must get into the habit of calling me Christine.”
“Listen to me,” he said, and he took her by the shoulders with a gesture that no one could have mistaken for a caress. “I do not intend to marry you.”
“I see you feel no doubt of my wishes in the matter.”
“I wonder where I got the idea.”
“Be reassured,” she said, finding herself released. “My intentions are honorable. I would not marry any really nice man absolutely against his will. Although I did say to myself the very first time I saw you, coming downstairs in that well-cut coat of yours—or is it the shoulders?—I did say: ‘I could be happy with that man, happier, that is, than with Ned.’ You may think it isn’t much of a compliment, but Ned has a very nice disposition, nicer than yours.”
“And I should say it was the first requisite for your husband.”