Susy winced a little: she wondered if the word would always sound so unnatural on his lips.
“No,” she said, with a laugh, “they simply think, for the present, that you’re giving me pearls and chinchilla cloaks.”
He wrinkled his brows good-humouredly. “Well, so I would, with joy—at this particular minute. Don’t you think perhaps you’d better take advantage of it? I don’t wish to insist—but I foresee that I’m much too rich not to become stingy.”
She gave a slight shrug. “At present there’s nothing I loathe more than pearls and chinchilla, or anything else in the world that’s expensive and enviable....”
Suddenly she broke off, colouring with the consciousness that she had said exactly the kind of thing that all the women who were trying for him (except the very cleverest) would be sure to say; and that he would certainly suspect her of attempting the conventional comedy of disinterestedness, than which nothing was less likely to deceive or to flatter him.
His twinkling eyes played curiously over her face, and she went on, meeting them with a smile: “But don’t imagine, all the same, that if I should... decide... it would be altogether for your beaux yeux....”
He laughed, she thought, rather drily. “No,” he said, “I don’t suppose that’s ever likely to happen to me again.”
“Oh, Streff—” she faltered with compunction. It was odd—once upon a time she had known exactly what to say to the man of the moment, whoever he was, and whatever kind of talk he required; she had even, in the difficult days before her marriage, reeled off glibly enough the sort of lime-light sentimentality that plunged poor Fred Gillow into such speechless beatitude. But since then she had spoken the language of real love, looked with its eyes, embraced with its hands; and now the other trumpery art had failed her, and she was conscious of bungling and groping like a beginner under Strefford’s ironic scrutiny.
They had reached their obscure destination and he opened the door and glanced in.
“It’s jammed—not a table. And stifling! Where shall we go? Perhaps they could give us a room to ourselves—” he suggested.