“Expel me!” he scoffed. “What would you expel me for? You couldn’t do that without a reason.”
“But I have a reason.”
“A reason!” he repeated aghast, “a reason sufficient to expel me? What reason pray?”
“Making love to me.”
Silence followed—a depressing silence during which neither of them moved. She had spoken in the heat of the moment, the next she could have bitten out her tongue for her indiscretion. St. John stared at her fully a minute. Then he smiled rudely.
“Making love to you!” he repeated. “Absurd! I have never spoken a word of love to you in my life.”
It was true; he had not, and Jill’s cup of humiliation was full. What had induced her to make such an egregious error?
“You’ll be running me in for breach of promise, I suppose?” he continued ruthlessly. “Don’t you think that you’re a little—a little—well, conceited to be so premature?”
Jill turned upon him wrathfully.
“How dare you speak to me like that?” she cried. “It is only what people think. For myself it wouldn’t have mattered whether you had made love to me or not; I should soon have settled that.”