"Oh no! How can you say so?"
"I can say so, because I think there's a good deal of truth in it. I'm not without some glimmering of insight into her character myself; and to be quite frank, it was seeing her set her pretty white teeth and clinch her fist and stamp her foot, to get her way over nothing at all, that first made me fall in love with her."
"Then I will say no more. I see you know her as well as I do."
"Yes, I know her," he said, confidently, marching on again. "I don't think there are many corners of her character into which I haven't seen."
Several remarks arose to Diane's lips, but she repressed them, and they continued their walk in silence. During the three or four turns they took, side by side, up and down the terrace, she divined the course his thought was taking, and her speech was with his inner rather than his outer man. Suddenly he stopped, with one of his jerky pauses, and when he spoke his voice took on a boyish quality that made it appealing.
"Mrs. Eveleth, do you know what I think? I think that you and I have come down here on what looks like a fool's business. If it wasn't for leaving Dorothea here with Reggie Bradford, I'd put you in the motor and we'd travel back to New York as fast as tires could take us."
"Upon my word," she confessed, "you make me almost wish we could do it. But, of course, it isn't possible. There must be some one here to meet Dorothea—and explain. I could do that if you liked."
"Oh no!" he exclaimed, with a new change of mind; "I should look as if I were showing the white feather."
"On the contrary, you'd look as if you knew what it was to be a man."
"And Derek Pruyn might hold out against me in the end."