"Well, he simply says that if that's the way I feel perhaps we'd better call it off."
"And are you going to?"
Etta's eyes blazed with their black flames. "Call it off? Me? Not much, I won't."
"Still if he won't fix a date...."
"He'll jolly well fix a date—or meet me in the court."
"Oh, but, Etta, you wouldn't...."
"I don't say I would for choice. There are two or three other things I could do, and I think I'll try them first."
"What sort of things?"
In the answer to that question Miss Nash was even more absorbed than in Juliet Allingham's sin. Juliet Allingham was after all but a creature of the brain; whereas Etta Messenger's adventures might conceivably be her own. It was not merely some one else's love story that held her imagination in thrall; it was the possibility that one of these days she, Milly Nash, might have a man playing fast and loose with her heart's purest offering....