"Thanks. Don't stand there. It makes me feel formal. And please go on smoking." She gave him one of those smiles that made obedience a delight. "That's better. I want to tell you that, except for one incident, I shall look back on these days on the Galatea with real pleasure. You're sorry that you committed assault and battery, aren't you?"
"Very sorry," said Franklin. What else could he say with those frank laughing eyes upon him.
"Yes, I'm sure you are. I was too, but will agree to forget, because otherwise you've been so nice and kind."
Franklin bowed. He knew that he was a fool, but he felt that she had decorated him with an order. What was behind all this?
Beatrix threw back her golden head and burst out laughing. "I'll tell you," she said, reading his thoughts on his face. He had not troubled to become socially expert in disguising his feelings. She got up, ran one of the bachelor chairs near to Franklin, sat down and bent forward. Artificiality, self-consciousness and that touch of the precocious that she took an impish pleasure in adopting in a crowd, all left her. "Look here," she said, "I'm going to be very honest with you, for a change. Can you bear it?"
"Go ahead," said Franklin, boyishly. It seemed to him that he was looking at and sitting close to a new girl,—the girl described to him by Malcolm in that emotional outburst of his.
"I'm awfully, really awfully sorry I played the fool and let you into all this, Pelham. I took a horrible advantage of you and I'm beastly ashamed about it."
"Oh, that's all right," said Franklin, who would willingly have gone through it all again to be treated so charmingly.
"You say that because, at this moment, you and I are friends and have put our cards on the table, but I know jolly well that I've given you a very bad time and have got you into a hateful mess."
"That's true enough," he said. "But why not fall in with the only possible plan to put us both out of it?"