“Tell me, are we great friends?” she asked.
He knew she would ask that again: women are such damned fools, and he leaned lazily towards her.
“And tell me!” he said. “Don’t you know it?”
His face must have reassured her, for she let her eyes dwell on it, and broke into a smile.
“I suppose I do,” she said. “You wouldn’t have asked me to stay with you otherwise. What a bore we women must be! We always want to be reassured about the things a man takes for granted!”
Colin turned over on to his side.
“I never take anything for granted,” he said. “It’s really much wiser not to expect anything, and not to count on anything till it’s given you.”
He knew she would attach a certain meaning to that. She did.
“Colin, what nonsense!” she said. “Why, you’re the one person in the world who always gets what he wants.”
He sat up, plucked two long stems of grass, and threaded them together, with that rapt intentness which must mean to her that he was thinking of something else than this task of his fingers.