“Your imagination,” he declared, “is running away with you.”
“Are you our enemy?” she asked. “Is this seeming friendship of yours a cloak to hide some scheme of yours to make us suffer? Or—” She drew a little closer to him, and her eyes drooped.
“Or what?” he repeated.
“Is there a little left,” she whispered, “of the old folly?”
“Why not?” he answered quietly. “I was very much in love with you.”
“It is dead,” she murmured. “I believe that you hate me now!”
Her voice was almost a caress. She was leaning a little towards him; her eyes were seeking to draw his.
“Hate you! How impossible!” he said calmly. “You are still a beautiful woman, you know, Ruth.”
He turned and studied her critically. Lady Ruth raised her eyes once, but dropped them at once. She felt herself growing paler. A spasm of the old fear was upon her.
“Yes,” he continued, “age has not touched you. You can still pour, if you will, the magic drug into the wine of fools. By the bye, I must not be selfish. Aren’t you rather neglecting your guests?”