“It’s all right, Alec,” said Barbara gently. “It was a perfectly reasonable mistake to make. As I said, that was only a dreadful coincidence.”
“And aren’t you going to change your mind about what you said this morning?” asked Alec humbly.
Barbara looked at him quickly. “Why should I?” she returned swiftly. “I mean——” She hesitated and corrected herself. “Why should you think I might?”
“I don’t know. You were very upset this morning, and it occurred to me that you might have had bad news and were acting on the spur of the moment; and perhaps when you had thought it over, you might——” He broke off meaningly.
Barbara seemed strangely ill at ease. She did not reply at once to Alec’s unspoken question, but twisted her wisp of a handkerchief between her fingers with nervous gestures that were curiously out of place in this usually uncommonly self-possessed young person.
“Oh, I don’t know what to say,” she replied at last, in low, hurried tones. “I can’t tell you anything at present, Alec. I may have acted too much on the spur of the moment. I don’t know. Come and see me when we get back from the Mertons’ next month. I shall have to think things over.”
“And you won’t tell me what the trouble was, dear?”
“No, I can’t. Please don’t ask me that, Alec. You see, that isn’t really my secret. No, I can’t possibly tell you!”
“All right. But—but you do love me, don’t you?”
Barbara laid her hand on his arm with a swift, caressing movement. “It wasn’t anything to do with that, old boy,” she said softly. “Come and see me next month. I think—I think I might have changed my mind again by then. No, Alec! You mustn’t! Anyhow, not here of all places. Perhaps I’ll let you once—just a tiny one!—before we go; but not unless you’re good. Besides, I’ve got to run in and pack now. We’re catching the two forty-one, and Mother will be waiting for me.”