She threw back her head and laughed.
"Why do you laugh?"
"You say such funny things sometimes."
"I remember the first joke I made you thought was bad taste."
She looked at him. There was excitement in her eyes. The rush of the stream had taken her; an impulse for the moment carried her away.
"I repeated that joke afterwards," she said quickly, "the same evening to shock Mr. Arthur."
The moment she had said it, came regret. It was showing him too plainly the impression that he had left upon her. But he seemed not to notice it.
"Was he shocked?" he asked.
"Yes—terribly."
She looked at her watch. That moment's regret had brought her to her senses. The blood came quickly to her face, as she thought how intimately they had talked within so short a time. Reviewing it—as with a searchlight that strides across the sky—she scarcely believed that it was true. In just an hour, she had told him as much—more than she had told Miss Hallard. Had she changed? Was the freedom of the life she lived altering her? She had known Mr. Arthur for a year and a half before he had thought of speaking with any intimacy to her. The thought that she was deteriorating—becoming as other women—passed across her mind with a sensation of nausea. She rose to her feet.