“I thought you might have said it—well, just for something to say. Perhaps because you were embarrassed, or to make Tom jealous.”
“Embarrassed! Why embarrassed? Tom’s an old friend. I must say you have a high opinion of me. It strikes me Mrs. Theodore Gurney’s going to have a rough time.”
There was a dead silence. She pivoted slowly and captured both his hands. Dragging him to the couch, she made him sit beside her. In the sudden transition of her moods, her face had become as young and mischievous with smiles as before it had been elderly and cross.
“Well, Meester Deek, haven’t you anything to say? Don’t you like me better now?” She dived to within an inch of his face as though she were about to kiss him, and there stopped short, laughing into his eyes. When he made no response, she became tensely grave. “I can be a little cat sometimes, and yet you want to live with me all your life. I should think you’d get sick of me. I’m very honest to let you see what I really am.” She said this with a wise shake of her head and an air of self-congratulation. “But you’re a beast, too, when you’re offended.” She stooped and kissed his hand. “The first time I’ve ever done that,” she murmured, “to you or any man. Haven’t we gone far enough with our quarreling?”
“I think we have.”
“But you’ve not forgiven me?—Well, I’ll tell you, and then you’ll ask my pardon.” She moved away from him to the other end of the couch. “I’ve really been very sweet to you all the time and you haven’t known it. Last night we were both stupid; I was upset. I don’t know which of us was the worst. But after you’d gone I was sorry, and I dressed, and I went out all alone at midnight to send you a telegram so you’d know that I was sorry directly you woke in the morning. It wasn’t my fault that you didn’t get it. And then about to-day—you’re angry because I didn’t call you up. It was because I was looking after your Christmas present. And when you came here all glum and sulky I let you see my bedroom. And now I’ve kissed your hand. Isn’t that enough?”
She was turning all the tables on him. “Let’s be friends,” he said. When he slipped his arm about her, she flinched. “Mind my flowers. Don’t crush them. You must first say that you’re sorry.”
“I’m sorry. Terribly sorry.”
“All right, then. But you did hurt me last night when—when you went away like that.”
“But you often let me go away like that.”