“Direct me, please,” he begged.
“I should try,” she continued, “to put a bridle upon my desires and take up the reins. You could lead them in a more suitable direction.”
“For instance?”
“There is myself,” she declared.
He laughed quietly.
“You!” he repeated. “Why, you are the most incorrigible flirt in Christendom. You would no more tie yourself up with one man than enter a nunnery.”
She sighed.
“I have always been misunderstood,” she declared, looking at him pathetically out of her delightful eyes. “What you call my flirtations have been simply my attempts, more or less clumsy, to gain a husband. I have been most unlucky. No one ever proposes to me!”
He laughed derisively.
“Your victims have been too loquacious,” he replied. “How about Gayton, who went to Africa because you offered to be his friend, and Horris—he came to my rooms to tell me all about it the day you refused him, and Sammy Palliser—you treated him shockingly!”