“Why should I be?” he asked loudly. “Father ought to have known better than tackle me when I was lit up! Of course, it was an awful thing to do, but I wasn’t responsible for my actions at the time. What did he say?” he asked uncomfortably.
“Nothing—he said nothing. I wish he had. Won’t you go to Horsham and see him, Ray?”
“No—let it blow over for a day or two,” he said hastily. He most assuredly had no anxiety to meet his father. “If . . . if he forgives me he’ll only want me to come back and chuck this life. He had no right to make me look little before all those people. I suppose you’ve been to see your friend Gordon?” he sneered.
“No,” she said simply, “I have been nowhere but here. I came up by the workmen’s train. Would it be a dreadful sacrifice, Ray, to give up this?”
He made an impatient gesture.
“It isn’t—this, my dear Ella, if by ‘this’ you mean the flat. It is my work that you and father want me to give up. I have to live up to my position.”
“What is your work?” she asked.
“You wouldn’t understand,” he said loftily, and her lips twitched.
“It would have to be very extraordinary if I could not understand it,” she said. “Is it Secret Service work?”
Ray went red.