'Well, have they primed you?' she said very low. 'Have you got your lesson—by heart at last?'
He looked at her from immeasurable distance. 'I am not sure that I understand you,' he said. He waited an instant, then, seeing no explanation vouchsafed, 'However unpropitious your mood may be,' he went on with a satirical edge in his tone, 'I shall discharge my errand.'
Still she waited.
Her silence seemed to irritate him. 'I have promised,' he said, with a formality that smacked of insolence, 'to offer you what I believe is called "amends."'
The quick change in the brooding look should have warned him.
'You have come to realize, then—after all these years—that you owed me something?'
He checked himself on the brink of protest. 'I am not here to deny it.'
'Pay, then,' she said fiercely—'pay.'
A moment's dread flickered in his eye and then was gone. 'I have said that, if you exact it, I will.'
'Ah! If I insist, you'll "make it all good"! Then, don't you know, you must pay me in kind?'