‘Good-bye, Susan,’ says Crosby, coming up at this moment to the slim maiden who bears that name. ‘Though you deserted me so shamelessly a while ago, I bear you no ill-will. I understood the action. It was a guilty conscience drove you to it. I asked you a simple question, and you refused to answer it. I ask it again now.’ A pause, during which Susan taps her foot on the ground, and tries to assume a puzzled air that would not have deceived a boy. ‘And you still refuse, Susan?’—tragically. ‘Is it that you can’t?’
‘Can’t what?’—blushing fatally.
‘Can’t say that the redoubtable James is nothing to you.’
‘I suppose you want to drive me away again,’ says Susan demurely.
‘That subterfuge won’t answer a second time. Don’t dream of it. If you attempt to fly me now, I warn you that I shall grapple with that blue tie round your neck, and—you wouldn’t like a scene, Susan, would you? Come, is he nothing to you?’
‘I really wonder,’ says Susan, struggling with a desire for laughter that brightens up her pretty eyes and curves the corners of her lips, ‘that after all I have said before you should still persist in this nonsense.’
‘That still is no answer. I don’t even know if it is nonsense. I begin to suspect you of being a diplomatist, Susan.’
‘I am not,’ says she, a little indignantly. ‘I am nothing in the world but what you see—just Susan Barry.’
‘And that means—shall I tell you what that means?’ He is smiling lightly, easily, but a good deal of heartfelt passion can lie behind a smile. ‘Shall I?’
This is another question. But Susan, softly glancing, puts that question by.