"How can you be so unkind to me," he says, "so cold? Don't you know it breaks my heart?"
"I cold!" With reproachful wonder. "I unkind! Oh, Teddy! and what are you? Think of all you said to me yesterday and this morning; and now, now you called me a coquette! What could be worse than that? To say it of me, of all people! Ted,"—with much solemnity,—"stare at me,—stare hard,—and see do I look the very least bit in the world like a coquette?"
He does stare hard, and doing so forgets the question in hand, remembering only that her eyes, her lips, her hair are all the most perfect of their kind.
"My beloved," he whispers, caressingly.
"It is all your own fault," goes on Circe, strong in argument. "When I provoke you I care nothing for Philip Shadwell, or your Mr. Potts, or any of them: but when you are uncivil to me, what am I to do? I am driven into speaking to some one, although I don't in the least care for general admiration, as you well know."
He does not know; common sense forbids him to know; but she is telling her fibs with so much grace of feature and voice that he refuses to see her sin. He tries, therefore, to look as if he agreed with her, and succeeds very fairly.
"Then you did not mean anything you said?" he asks, eagerly.
"Not a syllable," says Molly. "Though even if I did you will forgive me, won't you? You always do forgive me, don't you?"
It would be impossible to describe the amount of pleading, sauciness, coaxing she throws into the "won't you?" and "don't you?" holding up her face, too, and looking at him out of half-shut, laughing, violet eyes.
"I suppose so," he says, smiling. "So abject a subject have I become that I can no longer conceal even from myself the fact that you can wind me round your little finger."