He paused before replying, and looked up at the long table where the most of the people in the hotel were sitting.
"There is a man with a face like what you see in a spoon sitting there," he said. "No, I did not."
Kit followed his glance.
"Yes, I see him," she said, "and his mouth opens sideways. But how modest of you! What reason had you to think that?"
Ted felt his heart thump with a sudden riotous movement. He took up his glass to finish his champagne, and noticed that his hand shook a little. He drank the wine at a gulp.
"Because I think you like me a little, Kit," he replied.
He had never spoken to her quite like that before, though, for that matter, he might have used the identical words to her a score of times; never before had she given him exactly that sort of opportunity. But the presence of so many people close at hand of so utterly different a society to theirs that they might have been Red Indians, gave both him and her a strangely isolated feeling, as if they had been alone on a desert island. Both knew also that he by proposing, she by acceding to this visit to Aldeburgh, had taken another step in intimacy towards each other.
But without a pause Kit replied; and in spite of her reply, so far from disavowing it, she felt a sudden inward leap of exultation, and he, in spite of the lightness of her reply, was confirmed.
"Oh, Ted, don't be serious!" she said. "It is such bad manners. Think of Toby; think of the man with the spoon-face."
Ted lifted his brown eyes to hers, but she sat with eyes downcast, playing with her dessert-knife.