MacRae spoke without weighing his words. Yet that was the truth, although he knew that such a frank truth was neither good form nor policy. He was sorry before the words were out of his mouth. Betty could not possibly understand what he meant. He was not sure he wanted her to understand. MacRae felt himself riding to a fall. As had happened briefly the night of the Blackbird's wrecking, he experienced that feeling of dumb protest against the shaping of events in which he moved helpless. This bit of flesh and blood swaying in his arms in effortless rhythm to sensuous music was something he had to reckon with powerfully, whether he liked or not. MacRae was beginning dimly to see that. When he was with her—
"But I'm not inaccessible."
She dropped her voice to a cooing whisper. Her eyes glowed as they met his with steadfast concern. There was a smile and a question in them.
"What ever gave you that idea?"
"It isn't an idea; it's a fact."
The resentment against circumstances that troubled MacRae crept into his tone.
"Oh, silly!"
There was a railing note of tenderness in Betty's voice. MacRae felt his moorings slip. A heady recklessness of consequences seized him. He drew her a little closer to him. Irresistible prompting from some wellspring of his being urged him on to what his reason would have called sheer folly, if that reason had not for the time suffered eclipse, which is a weakness of rational processes when they come into conflict with a genuine emotion.
"Do you like me, Betty?"