"With victory for the prize," he suggested.
She thought for a second; then dropped her head. "I don't know. No one can tell. Perhaps—perhaps not."
"But you can tell me some of it—me," he insisted.
"But it's so hopeless," she said wearily. "And you're really too young to know what I mean when I talk. Then, too, it's such a horrid story. Just as yours is, you know.
"Mixed love and straight-out killing haven't been respectable since the time when Catherine de' Medici shoved every pleasant way of getting on under a cloud. How I do wish I had lived when you could kill a man by shaking hands! If that were possible now, I know what I'd do to lots of men."
"What?" asked Carleigh, quickly.
"I'd never shake hands any more. I'd kiss them all instead. It would be so humane and blameless—and nice."
He felt all the blood in him bound out of his heart to meet her whimsy.
"You darling!" he cried ecstatically. "What could be nicer? A fig for your tragedies. We'll just flirt—and—and—"
He seized her and was drawing her into a close embrace. His face was scarlet, his pupils distended.