“I’m not thinking. I’m angry. Mrs. Sheerug’s a dear; I know that as well as you. But she wants to reform me. She makes me wild when she says, ‘You have your mother’s laugh,’ as though being like my mother damned me. And she said something horrid about Fluffy and about the way I’ve been brought up.”
“Are you going to Fluffy’s now?”
She shook her head. “Fluffy’s leaving for the continent.”
“Then where?”
Suddenly she laughed. “With you, if you like.”
He stared at her incredulously. “With me?”
“Yes.”
He seized her hands, “You mean that you’ll——”
All the hunger to touch and hold her which he had staved off, urged him to passion. She turned her lips aside. He drew her to him, kissing her eyes and hair. He was full of sympathy for the fierceness in her heart; it was right that she should be angry in her mother’s defense.
“You queer Meester Deek, not marry you—I didn’t say that.” She tried to free herself, but he clasped her to him. “You must let me go or I won’t tell you.”