‘My dear Susan, why interfere with his mad joy?’ says Dom in a whisper that is meant to be perfectly audible, and is so, to all around. ‘He’ll catch cold to a moral; and he’s frightfully uncomfortable. But to sit at your feet: what comfort could compare with that?’
‘Several,’ says Susan calmly. ‘Come here, James. I want to talk to you.’
And, indeed, from this moment she devotes herself to the devoted James. Crosby she ignores completely, and when at last he rises to go, she says ‘good-bye’ to him with a very conventional air.
‘Are you really going—and so soon?’
The others have moved a little away from them.
‘What is the good of my staying when you won’t even look at me?’
‘I am looking at you,’ says Susan, flushing scarlet, but compelling her eyes to rest on his—for a moment only, however. ‘But—you know I don’t like you to allude to that day.’
‘It was a very small allusion. It gave you’—slowly—‘your chance, however.’
‘My chance?’
‘To amuse yourself with the man of war.’