“I don’t know,” said Clare. “But please don’t do it to me. It makes me feel awfully uncomfortable somehow. You won’t, will you?” she asked, with a sort of appeal. “You would make me tell you everything—and then I should hate myself.”
“But I shouldn’t hate you.”
“Oh yes, you would! You would hate me for knowing.”
“By Jove! It’s too bad!” cried Brook. “But as for that,” he added humbly, “nothing would make me hate you.”
“Nothing? You don’t know!”
“Yes, I do! You couldn’t make me change my mind about you. I’ve grown to—to like you a great deal too much for that in this short time—a great deal more than is good for me, I believe,” he added, with a sort of rough impulsiveness. “Not that I’m at all surprised, you know,” he continued with an attempt at a laugh. “One can’t see a person like you, most of the day, for ten days or a fortnight, without—well, you know, admiring you most tremendously—can one? I dare say you think that might be put into better English. But it’s true all the same.”
A silence followed. The warm blood mantled softly in the girl’s fair cheeks. She was taken by surprise with an odd little breath of happiness, as it were, suddenly blowing upon her, whence she knew not. It was so utterly new that she wondered at it, and was not conscious of the faint blush that answered it.
“One gets awfully intimate in a few days,” observed Brook, as though he had discovered something quite new.
She nodded, but said nothing, and they still walked up and down. Then his words made her think of that sudden intimacy which had probably sprung up between him and Lady Fan on board the yacht, and her heart was hardened again.
“It isn’t worth while to be intimate, as you call it,” she said at last, with a little sudden sharpness. “People ought never to be intimate, unless they have to live together—in the same place, you know. Then they can’t exactly help it, I suppose.”