The tension broke. “Fancy calling you a man and me a woman,” she laughed. She bent forward across the table. “We both ought to be spanked—you most especially.”
“Why me especially?”
“A little boy like you coming to a little girl like me and pretending to speak seriously of marriage.—But let’s be honest with each other always. Do you promise?”
“I promise.”
“Then, I’ll tell you something. I think it’s splendid of you to go on loving me when you know that I’m not loving you in return.”
“And I think it’s splendid of you to let me go on loving.”
“But do I?” She eyed him mockingly. Then, with one of those sudden changes to wistfulness, “What Horace has done has made me frightened. I’m afraid—and I’m only telling you because we’ve promised to be honest—I’m so afraid that you’ll leave me, and that then I may begin to care. But you’d never be unkind like that, would you?” His hand stole out and met hers in denial. They kept on assuring each other that, whatever had befallen other people’s happiness, theirs was unassailable.
They had dawdled through lunch. When at last they rose the room was nearly empty.
“What next?”
She clapped her hands. “I know. Make this day different from all the others. Let’s pretend.”