"I think it was about that Embassy ball—"
"I didn't want you to mention the Embassy ball?" he repeated, and now he was only smiling. "My dear child, surely you are dreaming."
She looked at him with the bewildered feeling that he was flatly contradicting himself. And yet she could remember he had not shaken his head at her. He had only nodded. Could it be that her cherished imagination had played her a trick at last? But the next moment it occurred to her that somehow she had been led away from her first question.
"Then have you seen him, Harry?" she insisted.
"No!" He jerked it out so sharply that it startled her, but she stuck to her subject.
"And you wouldn't have minded my telling him you had been at that ball?"
There was a pause while Harry looked at the fire. Then—"Look here," he burst out, "did he ask you about it?"
"Oh, no," she protested. "I only just happened to wonder."
He stared at her as if he would have liked to shake her. But then he rose from his frowning attitude before the fire, came over to her, sat on the arm of her chair, and, with the tip of one finger under her chin, lifted her face; but she did not lift her eyes. She heard only his voice, very low, with a caressing note that she hardly knew as Harry's.
"It isn't that I care what you say to him. The fact is, Flora, I suppose I was a little jealous, but I naturally don't like the suggestion that you would discuss me with a stranger."