"I'd never joke on such a dangerous subject as marriage. I'm far too timid for that. What do you say, Gladys?"
She had never seen him look serious before, and she was thinking that the expression became him.
"He knows how to make himself attractive to a woman when he cares to," she said to herself.
"I'd like a man that has lightness of mind. Serious people bore one so after a while." By "serious people" she meant one serious person whom she had admired particularly for his seriousness. But she was in another mood now, another atmosphere—the atmosphere she had breathed since she was thirteen, except in the brief period when her infatuation for Scarborough had swept her away from her world.
"No!" She shook her head with decision—and felt decided. But to his practised ear there was in her voice a hint that she might hear him further on the subject.
They lay back in their chairs, he watching the ragged, dirty, scurrying clouds, she watching him. After a while he said: "Where are you going when we reach the other side?"
"To join mother and auntie."
"And how long will you stay with them?"
"Not more than a week, I should say," she answered with a grimace.
"And then—where?"