Her gaze deepened. “On what?”
He stood up and walked across the room. Then he came back and paused before her. “On the alternative of marrying me.”
The slow color—even her blushes seemed deliberate—rose to her lower lids; her lips stirred, but the words resolved themselves into a smile and she waited.
He took another turn, with the thwarted step of the man whose nervous exasperation escapes through his muscles.
“And to think that in fifteen years I shall have a big practice!”
Her eyes triumphed for him. “In less!”
“The cursed irony of it! What do I care for the man I shall be then? It’s slaving one’s life away for a stranger!” He took her hands abruptly. “You’ll go to Cannes, I suppose, or Monte Carlo? I heard Hollingsworth say to-day that he meant to take his yacht over to the Mediterranean—”
She released herself. “If you think that—”
“I don’t. I almost wish I did. It would be easier, I mean.” He broke off incoherently. “I believe your Aunt Virginia does, though. She somehow connotes Hollingsworth and the Mediterranean.” He caught her hands again. “Alexa—if we could manage a little hole somewhere out of town?”
“Could we?” she sighed, half yielding.