"Yes ... I'm 'grown up,'" she said softly. She kept looking at him. Then she looked at the sea, then she looked back at him again. "It's nice ... being a woman," she added, still in that very soft voice.
"'Nice'?" asked Loring, with a short laugh. "You find it 'nice'?"
"Very nice," said Belinda.
She smiled suddenly. Her teeth glistened with a strange silvery lustre in the moonlight.
"Why?... Don't you?" she asked, her voice slightly shaken as by withheld laughter. It was going to be easier, after all, than she had thought. She did not realise that Bacchus had as much to do with it as Venus. She only knew that Morris was vibrating to her nearness, that his blood was trembling in him.
As he did not answer, she put out her hand and laid it lightly on his breast.
"Don't you?" she said again.
"Don't I what?" he asked rather crossly.
That hand was like a white flame to his drink-stirred blood.
"Oh, Morry!... What a fraud you are!..."