“So that’s how you spend your time?” he said, staring into her steady eyes. He emitted an ugly laugh and pushed her roughly from him. “A decent-minded girl would shrink from such contact.”
She smiled coldly.
“It is only the decent mind that does not fear these things,” she answered, and turned away from the look in his eyes, which was not good to see.
It was by a great effort at control that he refrained from striking her. He spluttered for words. Confronted with her cool disdain, anger overcame him. He felt himself at an immense disadvantage.
“You are impossible!” was all he could find to say.
Prudence, thinking over the scene later, while leaning from her window with the night wind cooling her heated face, wondered what was wrong with herself that this spirit of antagonism should flame forth at the slightest provocation. Why could she not endure William, and suffer his little homilies with patience? Why should Agatha’s constant fault-finding irritate her to the verge of desperation? If she were possessed of a vein of humour, she told herself, these things would merely afford amusement. But they did not amuse. They were slowly souring a naturally sweet disposition.
Big tears welled in the blue eyes, hung for a space on her lashes, and fell like silver dew upon the rose-leaves beneath the sill—hot tears that sprang from the well of discontent which had its source in a vain longing for unattainable things.