Startled, he still continued to look down into her eyes with no confusion in his own.
"I suppose I should have told you," he frankly admitted. "But it wasn't of any importance, and I—well, I cut such a poor figure that I dodged exhibiting it to you. The woman caught me on the Avenue and fairly bullied me into a tea-room, with my collar wilted and oily hands. I think she did it out of pure malice, too, for she had nothing to say, after all. But—surely that did not make you ill, Elsie?"
"You never thought that I might mind your going?"
"Why?" he asked simply. "What is it to us? You don't, do you?"
She put up her hands and clasped them behind his head.
"Set down the tea," she laughed, tears in her mockery, "or we will spill it between us. Did you think me an inhuman angel, dear darling? No, I don't mind; but I did."
"Like that?" amazed. "So much?"
"You keep remembering who Maît' Raoul Galvez raised," she warned, her lips against his. "I'm mighty jealous, man!"
"But I love you," he stammered clumsily. "That woman—she looked like a vixen! Poor Fred!"
Their first misunderstanding was passed, and left no shadow. By and by they drank the cold tea together, and Elsie persuaded her nurse to go to the factory as usual.