He fingered his thick, fair moustache, and Adela looked up at him furtively in the moonlight.
He was very big and good-looking; and when she danced with him, and met his full, bold gaze, Adela could almost forget about such conversations between them as the present one.
Besides, he had not always talked like this. Once he had pretended not to know what colour her eyes were, and once he had told her about his life in India. She wished intensely that the conversation now would shift to some such topic.
The moonlight and the heavy scent of the syringa seemed to mock her.
“And what are your books about?” said Willoughby laboriously. “Love, I suppose?” He broke into a roar of laughter. “Does the heroine fall fainting into the hero’s arms in the last chapter, eh? That’s the style, isn’t it?”
Adela stood up, trembling. “I think I want to go in now, please. The—the dance must be finished now.”
He stood up also. “But I say! What’s the matter? You’re not ratty, are you?” He pulled unceremoniously at the prim velvet ribbons that hung from her waist. “Sit down again. Don’t you know I’m going away to-morrow? You might be a little bit nice to me, I do think.”
“I didn’t know you wanted me to be,” she said swiftly.
He laughed, and pulled her on to the bench again.
Adela’s mother, with whom she always lived, had told her very often that men never really respected a woman who let them “take liberties.” Adela, never before put to the test, recklessly determined to disregard the parental axiom.