"Are you feeling friendly to me?"
Now came the attitude; she threw herself into it and smiled.
"That's what I wanted," he went on. "Now I can say what I have to say."
She sat still, waiting to hear him. There was now no sign of uneasiness about her. She smiled luxuriously, and her eyes were resting on his face with evident pleasure. They were together again as they had been in the Long Gallery; the same contentment possessed her. The inner feeling had its outward effect. There came on him the same admiration, the same sense that she commanded his loyalty. When she had come to his rooms that afternoon he had found it easy to rebuke and to rule her. His intent for the evening had been the same; he had sought to bring her to a more friendly mind chiefly that she might accept with greater readiness the chastening of cool common-sense, and a rebuke from the decent pride which her proposal had outraged. Harry was amazed to find himself suddenly at a loss, looking at the girl, hardly knowing how to speak to her.
"Well?" she said. Where now was the tremulous excitement? She was magnificently at her ease and commanded him to speak, if he had anything to say. If not, let him hold his peace.
But he was proud and obstinate too. They came to a conflict there in the little room—the forgotten cab waiting outside, the forgotten Mina beginning to stir in her bed as voices dimly reached her ears and she awoke to the question—where was Cecily?
"If we're to be friends," Harry began, "I must hear no more of what you said this afternoon. You asked me to be a pensioner, you proposed yourself to be——"
He did not finish. The word was not handy, or he wished to spare her.
She showed no signs of receiving mercy.