She lifted her eyes, and when she saw his expression she couldn’t help smiling a little, it was such intense, such concentrated entreaty. ‘Don’t what?’ she asked.
‘Don’t think,’ he begged. ‘Not now. Not here. Except about us.’
‘But,’ she said, ‘that’s exactly what I was doing till——’
‘I know. I’m a fool. I can’t help somehow blurting things out to you. And yet if you only knew the things I’ve by a miracle managed not to blurt. Why, as if I didn’t know this is no place for George——’
Again. He had done it again. He snapped his mouth to, pressing his lips tight together, and could only look at her.
‘Perhaps,’ said Catherine smiling, for really he had the exact expression of an agonisedly apologetic dog, ‘we had better talk about George and get it over. I should hate to think he was something we didn’t mention.’
‘Well, don’t talk about him much then. For after all,’ pleaded Christopher, ‘I didn’t ask him to dinner.’ And having said this he fell into confusion again, for he couldn’t but recognise it as tactless.
Apparently—how grateful he was—she hadn’t noticed, for her face became pensively reminiscent (imagine it, he said to himself, imagine having started her off on George when things had been going so happily!) and she said, breaking up her toast into small pieces and looking, he thought, like a cherub who should, in the autumn sunshine, contemplate a respectable and not unhappy past,—how, he wondered, did a comparison with autumn sunshine get into his head?—she said, breaking up her toast, her eyes on her plate, ‘George was very good to me.’
‘I’m sure he was,’ said Christopher. ‘Any man——’
‘He took immense care of me.’