Jack coloured furiously while filled with indignant pity for her. Poor girl!—after all, she was quite young!... He did not care how old she was; she was young enough to be pitied for the rotten time her selfish husband gave her.
They spent a supremely innocent evening looking through albums of photographs and talking football and polo. The dinner was excellent, and Mrs. Fox, clever in the art of entertaining, modelled her conversation to suit his manly tastes, in the end breaking down all his natural shyness and placing him on terms of easy friendship. When Jack eventually rose to go he was flattered by her open reluctance to part with him; her pleasure in his society had been so frank and appealing.
"I have never enjoyed an evening so much in my life, Jack," she said cooingly. "Why are you so different from other men?"
"Am I?" he asked in some confusion as she retained his hand in hers.
"In a thousand ways. I almost wish I had never met you, Jack!"
"Why?" he asked, his breath suddenly short, his heart beating a rapid tattoo in his breast. For the life of him he could not say the easy pretty things that fell so naturally from other men's lips.
"Because—Oh! why, you must know—I shall always be making comparisons which are odious, and remember, I have to put up with only odiousness!"
"I hate to think of it," he said huskily.
"It is sweet to think you mind."
"It makes a fellow—mad to do something. It's damned hard and cruel for you!"