"Oh, I happened to be there."
"Yes, and so I happened to talk. That's the way when people get on together."
Alicia looked up with a smile. Short as her acquaintance had been, she felt that the Premier was no longer a stranger. By opening his mind to her as he had done, he had claimed nothing less than friendship. He was, she told herself, like an old friend. And yet he was also unlike one; for, in intercourse with old friends, people are not subject alternately to impulses towards unrestrained intimacy and reactions to shy reserve. She liked him, but she was afraid of him; in fine, she was
hardly happy with him, and not happy—The confession could not be finished even to herself.
"Shall you be glad to go home, or sorry?" he asked.
"Oh, I shall be very sorry."
"Then," he suggested, smiling, "why not stay?"
The question came pat in tune with those thoughts that would not be suppressed. Before she knew what she was doing—before she had time to reflect that probably his words were merely an idle civility or the playful suggestion of an impossibility, she exclaimed,
"What do you——?"
She stopped suddenly, in horror at herself; for she found him looking at her with surprise, and she felt her face flooded with colour.