The smile came like sunshine flashing through cloud. “That kind is rarely the last.”
She pulled off the glove from her right-hand, Miss Self-Reliance, because it was furthest from him.
“When I was very little,” she said, “I used to ask you whether I was pretty. You used to drizzle in those days; all you’d tell me was, ’You have beautiful hands.’ Then Bones and I would steal away and cry in the currant-bushes. D’you remember?”
“I must have been a grudging little beast.”
“No, you were a nice boy when you weren’t quite horrid. But if I were to ask you now, ’Do you think I’m pretty?’ Please don’t answer. I’m not asking. But because of all that—the times we used to have—let’s be good playfellows while it lasts. We won’t say silly things or do silly things. Let’s be tremendously sensible. There! That’s a bargain.”
It wasn’t. If being in love wasn’t sensible, the last thing he wanted was to be sensible. He hadn’t come to America to be sensible in her meaning of the word. But the swiftness with which she took his consent for granted left no room for argument. She might mistake his arguing for drizzling—the fault which she held the most in contempt. So he kept both his tongue and his hands quiet, doing his best to forget all the ardent scenes which his imagination had conjured.
The lonely distance in the taxi between his corner and hers seemed to have widened. They passed over a long cat’s-cradle of girders, spanning the East River. She didn’t speak. She sat with her ungloved hand before her eyes and her face averted. Any stranger who had glanced in on them at that moment would have said they had quarreled. It felt very much like it to Teddy.