“I’m a free lance journalist,” said Miss Banks. “I suppose they picked me for this job because I don’t know anything about industry, and hate peace and women!”
Paul had risen.
“Do you hate women?” he asked in that same amused, indulgent tone.
“As much as Nietzsche did,” Miss Banks assured him. “Only in general, of course. There are exceptions.”
She smiled at Christine and held out her hand—which Christine had to take, and from which she received a fierce grasp that tingled through her arm and positively made the color rise in her face.
“You little beast!” she murmured, with energy, as Paul and Miss Banks went out of the front door.
II
As they stepped out of the tranquil, bright house, the cold sprang like a wolf at Paul’s throat and made him gasp. The blackness and the stillness of that night!
“We’ll make a dash for it,” he said, taking Miss Banks’s arm—a very solid little arm it was, too.
“No hurry,” said she. “I like this kind of weather, and I like this awful, dismal little place. At night it doesn’t look like a suburban residential park. It might be Siberia!”