Harry's voice, encouraged, said over my shoulder: "Ah, then! I could get you to like me again if you would only give me the chance, dear! Be kind to me. Look at me——"
Unreasonably, perhaps, I felt a quick irritation over that caressing tone that held the note of insincerity as a soft flower holds a spoiling insect.
I turned to look straight at him as he asked me. I met his dark eyes. I said bluntly: "Oh! Why do you pretend like this? I know as well as you do that you don't care for me yourself a bit!"
He gave a quick involuntary movement of surprise. The charming humbug of the Harry-type seldom gives anybody credit for seeing, never for seeing through him. Immediately he pulled himself together to look cruelly injured.
"Not care for you?" he echoed, indignantly. "Look here, I've always thought you one of the sweetest and straightest—I mean, the sweetest girl I ever met. The prettiest, too. If you knew how lovely you looked now at this minute with the sun on you! Lovely and warm-hearted and true. If you cared for any man, by Jove, he could bank on you! And he'd be the luckiest fellow in——"
"Perhaps," I cut him short rather ungraciously. "But I am afraid none of this that you say ... Forgive me, but none of it rings true to me."
"Not true? You're trying to make me out a liar?" retorted Harry heatedly. "Not true? A man doesn't ask a girl to be his for keeps, my dear, unless he's pretty serious about it. If it weren't true, why on earth should I ask you to marry me now, Joan?"
"For a reason that I have guessed," I said steadily. I moved on to the end of the hedge, turned up the path towards the garden gate.
Harry followed. I felt that he was fuming and bewildered. He muttered: "What do you mean?"
Without looking at him I replied: "I think you're asking me to accept you because another girl has refused you too often. You want to show another girl that you don't care; that other people have jumped at you! I know that some men have married for no better reason. You proposed to me out of pique. Now, isn't that the truth?"