She shook her head.
"I don't think you must talk to me quite like this," she said kindly.
"You have a wife, you know, and I am engaged to be married."
He laughed, quite easily.
"Never seen Ellen, have you?" he remarked. "She's a fine woman, you know, although she isn't quite your style. She'd think you sort of pale and colorless, I expect—no kind of go or dash about you."
"Is that what you think?" Edith asked him, smiling.
"You aren't exactly the style I've always admired," he confessed, "but there's something about you," he added, in a puzzled manner,—"I don't know what it is but I remember it from a year ago—something that seemed to catch hold of me. I expect I must be a sentimental sort of Johnny underneath. However, I do admire you, Edith, immensely. I only wish—"
Again she evaded him.
"Please do not forget Mr. Bomford," she begged.
"That silly old ass!" Burton exclaimed. "Looks as though he'd swallowed a poker! You're never going to marry him!"
"I think that I shall," she replied. "At any rate, at present I am engaged to him. Therefore, if you please, you must keep just a little further away. I don't like to mention it, but I think—haven't you been smoking rather too much?"