“Oh, you had a right to a certain monopoly since, owing to you only, she came,” and Katherine added, smiling still more good-humoredly, “I am not jealous, Peter.”
He turned to look at her. The words, the playful tone in which they were uttered, struck him like a blow. His guilty consciousness of his own feeling gave them a supreme nobility. She was not jealous. What a cur he would be if ever he gave her apparent cause for jealousy. The cause was there; his task must be to keep it hidden.
“But suppose I am?” he said; “you haven’t given me a single dance.”
Katherine’s smile was placid; she did not say that he had not asked for one. Indeed they had rarely danced together.
“I think of going to England in a day or two, Peter,” she observed. “The Devreuxs have asked me to spend a month with them.”
Peter sat very still.
“A sudden decision, Kathy?”
“No, not so sudden. Our tête-à-tête can’t be prolonged forever.”
“Until our wedding day, you mean? Well, the wedding day must be fixed before you go.”
“I yield. The first part of May.”