This, after all, was a fear easy to deal with. He passed his arm in hers and drew her from the window, feeling a foretaste of the final triumph as he did so, for, child, adorable child that she was, she had forgotten already the former fear.
“But you know what a nasty, cantankerous creature I am, darling,” he said, making her walk up and down with him. “You don’t really take my flings seriously. And didn’t you begin! How like a woman! What a woman you are! You know that I shan’t get over you. And I assure you that I don’t think less well of Malcolm’s fidelity.”
“But the bitterness, Bevis. Why were you so bitter?” Her voice trembled. “I am never bitter with you.”
“And I’m never bitter with you—though I’m a bitter person, which you aren’t. You know perfectly well that it was Miss Latimer whose neck I wanted to wring.—Beastly little stone-curlew, with her stare and her wailing.”
“It felt like my neck. Was it only Cicely’s, then? Poor little Cicely.”
“Poor little Cicely as much as you please. Only I’m sick of her, and want to get away from her, and to get you away. Seriously, Tony, why shouldn’t we be off at once?”
“At once?” Her wavering smile, while her eyes dwelt on him, showed the plaintive sweetness of reviving confidence. “But that’s impossible, dear, absurd Bevis.”
“Why impossible?”
“Why I couldn’t get married like that; at a day’s notice. And I couldn’t run away. I’m not afraid of Cicely, though you seem to be. And I couldn’t leave her like that, when I’ve only just arrived. It would be too unkind.”
The fact that she felt it necessary to argue it all out was in itself a good augury. He could afford to relinquish his project, though he did so reluctantly. “I’m not afraid of her,” he said. “Except when she frightens you.”