“Pooh!” she scoffed. “You talk like a stiffened sheet of foolscap! I am to leave here to-morrow, then, without my packet?”
“You must certainly leave—when you do leave—without that,” he assented. “There is one thing, however, which I very sincerely hope that you will leave behind you.”
“And that?”
“Your forgiveness.”
“My forgiveness for what?” she asked, after a moment’s pause.
“For my rashness this morning.”
Her eyes grew a little larger.
“Because you kissed me?” she observed, without flinching. “I have nothing to forgive. In fact,” she went on, “I think that I should have had more to forgive if you had not.”
He was puzzled and yet encouraged. She was always bewildering him by her sudden changes from the woman of sober thoughtfulness to the woman of feeling, the woman eager to give, eager to receive. At that moment it seemed as though her sex possessed her to the exclusion of everything outside. Her eyes were soft and filled with the desire of love, her lips sweet and tremulous. She had suddenly created a new atmosphere around her, an atmosphere of bewildering and passionate femininity.
“Won’t you tell me, please, what you mean?” he begged.