"Presuming on my income, as you said—was it last night?"
"When you were free. Does it seem so long ago?" She gave a little laugh, airy and sweet. "Oh poor Benedict! Would you like to cry off? Let me see: you may scratch any time before I tell Val, which will be when he comes in at five o'clock. Now then?"
This mention of Val was like a dash of cold water, and Lawrence tried to rouse himself. "Will you be serious for half a second, you incarnation of mischief?"
"No—yes—no, I don't want to be serious," she turned in his arms and the Isabel of last night pierced him with her dark, humid, brilliant eyes. "I want to forget. Make me forget!"
"Forget what?"
"Other women."
"There are no other women, Isabel."
"There have been.—Lawrence!" the scent of the honeysuckle pinned into her blouse seemed to narcotize all his senses with its irresistible sweetness, "you will be true to me, won't you? You won't love other women now? Say you never wanted to kiss any of them so much as— Oh!" Drunk with her Circean cup, Hyde was more than willing to convince her, but in a fashion of his own. Isabel gave a little sigh and faded out of his clasp: he tried to seize her but she was gone, leaving only the scent of bruised petals and the memory of a silken contact. "You're so—so stormy," the gossamer voice mocked him with its magic of youth and gaiety. "Val says—"
"Isabel, I'm sick of that formula. You're going to marry me, not
Val."
"—You're not one-third English."