“It was. You were, oh, so extremely righteous. But I’d have been just as angry in your defense, or any one else’s whom I liked. I make a loyal little friend.”
“Would you truly quarrel in my defense?”
She patted his hand where it rested on the wheel “Of course I would. But last night you hurt me so much that—— I wonder if I dare tell you. You see, it hurt all the more because we’d only just met. I pretended——”
He finished her sentence: “To be asleep.”
She bit her lip. “Yes.”
“Then you heard?”
“Heard what?”
“What I said when I buttoned your cloak about you?” She made her eyes innocently wide. “Did you do that? That was kind.”
She was dodging him. He knew it; yet he wondered. Had she heard him whisper that he loved her? If she had—— He glanced sideways; all he saw was the gleam of her throat through her blowy hair.
His mind went back across the years. How much he had lost of her—a child then, a woman now! If they were to bridge the gulf, it would be wiser to start with memories.