"Very well," she said, smiling. "If you knew everything, you wouldn't talk like that. I suppose you've no idea what it cost me?"
"What it cost you?"
She broke into a scornful laugh. "You know what it really meant. Still you've only a scolding for me! How funny that you see one half and not the other! But you've given me a very pleasant evening, Cousin Harry."
"You must leave my life alone," he insisted brusquely.
"Oh, yes, for the future. I've nothing left to offer, have I? I have been—refused!" She seemed to exult in the abandonment of her candor.
He looked at her angrily, almost dangerously. For a passing moment she had a sensation of that physical fear from which no moral courage can wholly redeem the weak in body. But she showed none of it; her pose was unchanged; only the hand on which her head rested shook a little. And she began to laugh. "You look as if you were going to hit me," she said.
"Oh, you do talk nonsense!" he groaned. But she was too much for him; he laughed too. She had spoken with such a grand security. "If you tell me to walk out of the door I shall go."
"Well, in five minutes. It's very late."
"Oh, we weren't bred in Bayswater," he reminded her.
"I was—in Chelsea."