"It has," she said. "At least—it threatens to!"
"What a shame!" He spoke commiseratingly. "And what were your plans—if it isn't impertinent of me to ask?"
She smiled faintly. "Well, marriage certainly wasn't one of them. And I'm not sure that it is now. I feel like the girl in Marionettes—Cynthia Paramount—who said she didn't think any women ought to marry until she had been engaged at least six times."
"That little beast!" Dick sat up suddenly and returned to his sculls.
"Juliet, why did you read that book? I told you not to."
Her smile deepened though her eyes were grave. She clasped her fingers about her knees. "My dear Dick, that's why. It didn't hurt me like The Valley of Dry Bones. In fact I was feeling so nice and superior when I read it that I rather enjoyed it."
Dick sent the boat through the water with a long stroke. His face was stern. After a moment Juliet looked at him. "Are you cross with me because I read it, Dick?"
His face softened instantly. "With you! What an idea!"
"With the man who wrote it then?" she suggested. "He exasperates me intensely. He has such a maddeningly clear vision, and he is so inevitably right."
"And yet you persist in reading him!" Dick's voice had a faintly mocking note.
"And yet I persist in reading him. You see, I am a woman, Dick. I haven't your lordly faculty for ignoring the people I most dislike. I detest Dene Strange, but I can't overlook him. No one can. I think his character studies are quite marvellous. That girl and her endless flirtations, and then—when the real thing comes to her at last—that unspeakable man of iron refusing to take her because she had jilted another man, ruining both their lives for the sake of his own rigid code! He didn't deserve her in any case. She was too good for him with all her faults." Juliet paused, studying her lover's face attentively. "I hope you're not that sort of man, Dick," she said.