“Of course,” pursued she, “I never could have done such a thing if I hadn’t known it would be—agreeable.”
That word agreeable struck him as being a peculiarly happy choice. He chuckled. Her smile showed that she herself regarded it as a rhetorical triumph. “You’ll have a chocolate—won’t you?” said he.
“Thank you,” she accepted, with eager gratitude. “Won’t you let me make it?”
He was already busy. “I can’t have you mussing in my closet,” he laughed. “Though, Heaven knows, I feel as if you were at home here.” It slipped out, before he realized what he was saying. He hoped she had not heard.
But she had. “That’s it!” cried she. “Don’t we feel at home and at ease with each other! I never felt that way with anybody in my life before. And I’ve an instinct that you never did, either—never so much so.... What’s the matter?”
He had turned in the closet doorway, was gazing gloomily at her, and, being so big and so dark, his gloom was indeed somber—suggested the darkness of an enchanted forest. “After all my resolutions!” he exclaimed, with bitterness of self-reproach. He shut the closet. “No chocolate,” he said firmly. “You must go home and let me work.”
“Why, what are you afraid of?” cried she, an angry light in her eyes. “You told me yesterday you wouldn’t have me. And now I’m engaged.”
“You must go.”
She stamped her foot, and in poise of head, in curve of brow and lip showed for the first time the imperiousness she had told him about. “If I didn’t like you so well!” she cried. “Do be sensible. You’re always calling me a baby. It’s you that are the baby.”
“I think so, myself,” said he, the more quietly but also the more strongly for her threatening outburst of temper. “Listen to me, Rix. This nonsense has got to stop. We’re going to keep away from each other. We’re not in love—and we’re not going to put ourselves in the way of temptation.” He looked reproachfully at her. “Why in thunder did you have to go and spoil everything with that chatter of yours yesterday? We were getting along beautifully, and the idea of you as a girl in the ordinary sense never had entered my head.”