"With Leslie, are you? M'm. But I'm taking you up to the Club afterwards," he persisted. "A fellow's got to look after"—here he laughed a little as if it were a joke that pleased him—"a fellow's got to look after his fiancée, hasn't he?"
She was a little subdued. She thought for the moment that he had put Colonel Conyers off, not for her, after all! but for that Machine of his. Then she thought: No!—the machine was second now. She said, half in hope, half in dread, "D'you mean the P.D.Q.?"
He turned, with his mouth full of salad, staring whimsically at her.
"The P.D.Q.? What you thinking of? I meant you."
"Me?" She gave a little gasp.
Life and happiness were too much for her again. She felt as if that whispering untouched champagne in her glass had gone to her head. Was it really true—that, that he had said?
"Well, aren't you?" he said gaily, but dropping his voice a little as the conversation rose about them. "Aren't you that to me? Engaged, aren't we?"
"Oh, I don't know," the young girl said, breathlessly. It was as if the moon that one had cried for had suddenly dropped, to lie like a round, silver mirror in one's lap. "Did you mean that, yesterday afternoon?"
"Didn't I mean it before that?" he said, half to himself. "What about all those dances? that time when Hugo dragged me off to that place by the river? Those would have been most incorrect," he teased her, "if we hadn't been. We shall have to be, my dear."
Then an impulse took her. (It is known to any young girl who is sincerely in Love.)