She looked at him curiously. Was it really true that he had become indifferent? She was not used to men who escaped.
“Tell me,” she asked, abruptly, “why did you come? I don't understand. You are here, and you pass your time being rude to me. I ask you to take me to dinner and you refuse. Do you know that scarcely a man in London would not have jumped at such a chance?”
“Very likely,” Tavernake answered. “I have no experience in such matters. I only know that I am going to do something else.”
“Something you want to do very much?” she whispered.
“I am going down to a little music-hall in Whitechapel,” Tavernake said, “and I am going to meet your sister and I am going to put her in a cab and take her to have some supper, and I am going to worry her until she promises to be my wife.”
“You are certainly a devoted admirer of the family,” she laughed. “Perhaps you were in love with her all the time.”
“Perhaps I was,” he admitted.
She shook her head.
“I don't believe it,” she said. “I think you were quite fond of me once. You have such absurdly old-fashioned ideas or I think that you would be fond of me now.”
Tavernake rose to his feet.