‘And she corrects herself with over-care. Having once said “Gaston,” it would be better not to go back to “Mr. Arbuthnot.”’
‘Ah, there, my dear girl, you are too strong. If Linda Thorne excuses she accuses herself, although I must confess I don’t see the heinousness of her crime. You are becoming a casuist, Dinah.’
‘Am I? It seems to me that I am remaining what I always was.’
They walked on, after this, mutually taciturn. The interest seemed to have gone from their talk. At last, just as they neared the first lights of Luc village, Dinah’s fingers closed with significant tightness on her husband’s arm.
‘I have an important word to say to you, Gaston. All through our walk I have been wishing to bring it out, but I had not the courage.’
‘Some one else calls me by my Christian name, perhaps? Or are we only to discuss more enormities of Linda Thorne’s?’
There was a threat of impatience in Gaston Arbuthnot’s voice. This little running accompaniment of domesticity gave a quite new character, he decided, to picnics, viewed as a means of social pleasure.
‘I was not thinking of Linda Thorne. I wanted to ask—Gaston, forgive me—if you would keep nearer to me till we get back to Guernsey?’
‘Nearer! Will not everybody be near everybody else on board the steamer? Don’t, I beg, ask me to do anything absurd,’ he added, with emphasis. ‘You have no idea how ready one’s best friends are to laugh at one under given circumstances.’