"I have taken the only opportunity I could get," he said. "I am a slave of circumstance. If I had come to you in rational costume you would not have consented to sit out with me."
There was a ring of laughter in his explanation. He did not take her anger seriously, then. Molly quivered with indignation. She would speedily show him his mistake.
"You think, then," she said, "that this buffoonery is too amusing to be foregone? I am afraid I do not agree with you."
She paused. Charlie had given a great start of surprise. She could see the astonishment on his boyish face under the white mantilla he wore.
"Oh, look here!" he exclaimed impetuously. "You have got the wrong side of everything. It isn't buffoonery. I don't play with sacred things. I'm in earnest, Molly. Can't you see it? What do you take me for?"
She heard the note of honesty in his voice and shifted her batteries.
"You may be—for a moment," she said, scorn vibrating in every word she uttered. "But you will soon get over it, you know. By to-morrow, or even sooner, all danger will be over."
"Stop!" exclaimed Charlie. For the first time in all her dealings with him he spoke sternly, as a man might speak, and Molly started at his tone. "You are making a mistake," he said more quietly. "I am not the superficial ass you take me for."
"I have only your word for that," she returned, striking without pity because for a second he had startled her out of her contemptuous attitude.
He looked at her in silence, and again her indignation arose full-armed against him. How dared he—this clown in woman's clothes—speak to her at such a moment of that which she rightly held to be the holiest thing on earth?