“I don’t know why it is.”
“Are you going to cry?”
“It’s no good crying.”
He held the arm now quite firmly and they faced each other. “You’d better tell me the whole story.”
Her lips quivered. She wished he would loosen his grip and hoped he would go on holding her for ever. It was a moment of mingled ecstasy and sadness. “Oh,” she almost wailed, “can’t I be unhappy if I want to?”
He gave a short laugh, saying, “Poor little girl,” and stooping, kissed her on the mouth. She endured that kiss willingly for a moment and then, very lightly, struck him in the face.
§ 6
Afterwards there was some satisfaction in thinking that she had done the dramatic thing—what the pure-minded heroine always did to the villain; but at the time the action was spontaneous and unconsidered. Henrietta was not really avenging an insult: she was simply expressing her annoyance at her pleasure in it. Being, when she chose, a clear- sighted young woman, she realized this, but she also knew that Francis Sales would find the obvious meaning in the blow. For herself, she sanely determined to blot that episode from her mind: it was maddening to think of it as an insult and dangerous to remember its delight, and she was able calmly to tell her aunts that Mr. Sales had seen her home.
“Then why didn’t he come in?” Caroline asked with a grunt. “Leaving you on the doorstep like a housemaid!”
“He only came as far as the bridge.”