"How tender you are with them, and with me how cruel!"
"You have many joys in your life, but they how few!"
"You are wrong there. The world has grown useless to me since I met you. You are my one joy, and you elude me; therefore pity me too."
"Who made you so gracious a courtier?" asks she, with a little shrug of her rounded shoulders.
"Now you cast scorn upon me," says Desmond, half angrily, and as he says it the thought of Kit's word flout comes to her, and she smiles. It is an idle thought, yet it is with difficulty she cleaves to the less offensive smiles and keeps herself from laughing aloud.
"Why should I do that?" she says, a little saucily. Indeed, she knows this young man to be so utterly in her power—and power is so sweet when first acquired, and so prone to breed [tyranny]—that she hardly turns aside to meditate upon the pain she may be causing him.
"I don't know," a little sadly; then, "Monica, you like me?"
"Yes, I like you," says Miss Beresford, as she might have answered had she been questioned as to her opinion of an aromatic russet.
Repressing a gesture of impatience, Desmond goes on calmly,—
"Better than Ryde?"