"Well, I won't, if you'll walk a little slower. I told you I had something to say to you."
"I don't want to hear it. There's no use talking about it. I'll say the same thing if you ask me for a hundred years."
A chuckle broke from him while he stood jauntily fingering the diamond in his tie, as if it were some talisman which imparted fresh confidence. Oh, it was useless to try to put a man like that in his place—for his place seemed to be everywhere!
"Well, it won't do any harm," he said at last. "As long as I like to listen to it."
"I wish you would leave me alone."
"But suppose I can't?" He was still chaffing. He would continue to chaff, she was convinced, if he were dying. "Suppose I ain't made that way?"
"I don't care how you're made. You may talk to Father if you like; but I'm going upstairs to take off my hat."
His chuckle swelled into a roar of laughter. "Talk to Father! Haven't I been talking to Father over at the Capitol for the last three hours?"
They had reached the gate beyond the monument, and swinging suddenly round, she started back toward the house. As she passed him he touched the end of her fur stole with a gesture that was almost imperative. His eyes had dropped their veil of pleasantry, and she was aware, with a troubled mind, that he was holding back something as a last resource if she continued to prove intractable. Again and again she had this feeling when she was with him—an uneasy intuition that his good humour was not entirely unassumed, that he was concealing a dangerous weapon beneath his offensive familiarity.
"After all I may be going to surprise you," he said lightly enough, yet with this disturbing implication of some meaning that she could not discern. "What if I tell you that I've no intention of making love to you?"