“I won’t. Not until you are married, and maybe I won’t even then. Maybe I’ll call you by your first name.”
She examined curiously my flushed face, stubborn, unhappy, disgusted with my own boorishness, but seeing no way out. Her cold gaze took in all that she wanted; noted that I was a fly in her spider-net; and she dimpled and thawed graciously. “Please!” she begged.
“Mademoiselle—er—er——” I stuttered, “do you know Spanish?”
“Not a word. But I have read ‘Don Quixote,’ of course.”
“Doña—that is Spanish for a noble lady. I shall call you Doña—Doña Quixote.”
“Wha-at?”
For the first and, I was about to say, the last time, I caught her off her guard, astonished, wounded, a bit angry. But the one word was all I wanted. It showed me I could bully her. That word had been warm and human, utterly unlike the icy flood which normally came from her lips. “Doña Quixote!” I repeated blandly.
“You shall do nothing of the sort. Don Quixote was a madman.”
“Yes, and you are a madwoman. You won’t listen to the people who love you.”
“You are not to say that word to me again.”