“Isn’t it clear?” she answered, very softly but with a suspicion of scorn in her low tones. “You kissed me because I deliberately invited it. I know that quite well. My anger—and I have been angry about it—is with myself.”
He was a little taken aback. Her perfect naturalness was disarming, a little confusing.
“You certainly did seem provocative,” he confessed, “but I ought to have remembered.”
“You are very stupid,” she sighed. “I deliberately invited your embrace. Your withholding it would simply have added to my humiliation. I am furious with myself, simply because, although I have lived a great part of my life with men, on equal terms with them, working with them, playing with them, seeing more of them at all times than of my own sex, such a thing has never happened to me before.”
“I felt that,” he said simply.
For a moment her face shone. There was a look of gratitude in her eyes. Her impulsive grasp of his hand left his fingers tingling.
“I am glad that you understood,” she murmured. “Perhaps that will help me just a little. For the rest, if you wish to be very kind, you will forget.”
“If I cannot do that,” he promised, “I will at least turn the key upon my memories.”
“Do more than that,” she begged. “Throw the key into the sea, or whatever oblivion you choose to conjure up. Moments such as those have no place in my life. There is one purpose there more intense than anything else, that very purpose which by some grim irony of fate it seems to be within your power to destroy.”
He remained silent. Ordinary expressions of regret seemed too inadequate. Besides, the charm of the moment was passing. The other side of her was reasserting itself.