They went, meekly. Their attempt to hide content over the dismissal together was extreme, but transparent.
“What was it?” Driscoll insisted, when he and Jacqueline were alone once more.
“You mean,” she exclaimed, “that you are going to quarrel–now?”
“Jack’leen, what was it?”
“I reck-on,” she observed demurely, “that the animal disputans was–was right, after all. It was nothing, I–reck-on.”
He noted mockery, defiance. There was much too much independence after her late surrender. He went up to her and deliberately reassumed the mastery. He held her, by force. “Mon chevalier,” she murmured softly. So she confessed his strength.
“Tell me,” he said.
“And you did not guess? You–Oh, how I hated you! How I never wanted to see you, never again! Not after, not after–Mon Dieu, you were two exasperating idiots, you and poor Prince Max! He virtually threw me into your arms. But I, monsieur, am not a person to be thrown. That is, unless–unless I do it myself, which–I did, hélas!”
The trooper’s grip tightened on her arms. “Then you,” he said earnestly, “would have let me lose you?”
She laughed merrily at him.