The Saint didn't move. He had arrived in front of her, and there he waited. In his immobility there was a kind of cynical curiosity. It was plain that she could do what she liked: he was only interested to see what she would choose to do.
And he wasn't bluffing. His cynicism was not really unkind. He would hate hurting her, but he meant every word he had said. Circumstance had put him on to a plane where the niceties of conventional chivalry could have no weight. And she knew that it was not worth taking up the challenge.
Her lower lip thrust out petulantly.
"Damn you," she whimpered. "Oh, damn you!"
"I'm sorry," he said, and meant it.
He bent over her and took the sheaf of papers out of her hand, from behind her, and touched her mouth lightly with his own as he did so.
She got up and flung herself away from him as far as the topography of the room would let her. He watched her out of the corner of his eye, balanced for any action that might be forced upon him; but the moment of danger was past. She stood by the dressing table glowering at him and biting her lips in a way that he remembered. Her ill temper had something very childish and almost charming about it: she was like a little girl in a pet.
He sat down on the bed with the sheaf of papers in his hand.
"Are you going to Scotland for the grouse?" he inquired amiably.
She took her bag off the dressing table, jerked out a packet of cigarettes, lighted one and moved further away. She stood with her back to him, smoking furiously, tapping one foot on the threadbare carpet, the whole dorsal view of her expressive of raging contempt; but he observed that she was covertly watching him in the long mirror on the wardrobe.