"Oh, I have my freedom. I glory in that, too. If I were married to you, I dare say I should have to cringe and even ask your forgiveness. As it is, before this day is over, you will probably ask mine."
"Don't flatter yourself! I'm going for good. That'll spike your prophecy."
He began to dress posthaste in order to put time and space between his threat and its retraction.
Janet watched him through the long dark lashes of her half-closed gray eyes. He was spoilt, tyrannical, contemptible. Yet his energetic masculine beauty and the seductive ring of his voice still had power over her.
"Don't imagine I can't see through your game," he flung out, recklessly scattering the heaps he had so painfully assembled, in a frenzied search for a necktie. "Your fine pretense of not wanting to marry me is a clever way of getting me to do it. Exceedingly, overwhelmingly clever! But it hasn't fooled me. Not a bit! There are some things I don't swallow."
"Thank goodness. Perhaps you won't swallow me then, though you seem on the point of doing so."
She lay down again. Her averted face permitted only her dark curly head to show.
"I might have married you," he shouted, brandishing the recovered necktie at the bed. "I might, if you hadn't shown yourself in your true colors. Thank God, I found you out in time."
"Yet you don't seem a bit pleased."
"You little serpent! Is there no escaping your sting?"