“You’re better,” he whispered. “You’re unexpected. None of my magic cloaks fit you. You’re surprising. A man likes to be surprised.”
She refused to look at him. With her chin tucked in the palm of her hand, she gazed listlessly to where the dancers whirled and glided. When she spoke, her voice sounded tired, as if with long contending.
“Why won’t you be disillusioned? Every time I show you a fault, you turn it into a virtue. From the moment we met, I’ve acted as selfishly as I knew how; and yet you still follow, follow, follow. Don’t you ever lose your temper? You can’t really like me.”
To her bewilderment a great wave of gladness swept into his eyes. At last he had stumbled on the hidden forethought that lurked behind all her omissions of kindness. She had been trying to save him from herself. In the light of this new interpretation, every grievance that he had harbored became an infidelity. He stretched out his hand, as though unconsciously, till the tips of his fingers were just touching hers.
“I shall always follow, and follow, and follow. I shall know now that, even when you’re trying to be cross, it only means that you’re——”
What it would only mean he didn’t tell her; at that moment the waiter returned.
When the covers had been removed from the dishes and they had something to distract them from their own intensity, the gayety of the rag-time caught them.
She flashed a friendly glance at him. “We’re always getting back to that old subject, like sitting hens to a nest.”
“We hadn’t got there quite.”
She pursed her lips judiciously. “Perhaps not quite. Wouldn’t it be safer to talk of something else?”