Besides, he had had that horrible nightmare. He would have to go flying again. Not even yet were his jangled nerves quite healed, poor child! He ought, he really ought to have some one to look after him, to give a thought to his welfare now and again ... some nice, sensible woman....
Mrs. Cartwright, in thus describing herself to herself, did not for one moment admit that if the boy had already proposed to her in the sunlight, he simply couldn't help himself in the moonlight.
So she answered him lightly and conventionally; she fell into step beside him. They walked.
She was too old for him, as she'd told him. A generation too old! But she was still not too old to walk with him, to listen to him. And ... When is a woman too old to wish she were young enough?
It was brusquely enough that Jack Awdas broke into speech.
"I say," he began, "how old should I have to be, then, before you'd want to marry me?"
She had been looking away across the Baissin with its twinkling lights, its guardian jewel flashing from white to red. She turned abruptly, dismayed, as one is dismayed when some trouble, dimly foreseen (and defied) descends upon one's head.
Oh dear.... Oh dear.... It was not quite at an end then? She had not yet definitely put a stop to this very young man's folly?
"Oh," she returned. "Oh, but we had agreed, I think, not to talk about ... that, any more...."
"Had we?" he retorted. "You had 'agreed,' perhaps. I hadn't."