She looked up at him with the air of detachment which he had always found more trying than her sharpest accusations.
“Why should I punish you at all? Hasn’t your conscience been doing that much for you?”
“Don’t!” he begged again. “Now that it is all over, I am going to tell you that I have been a liar and a hypocrite.”
She stopped him with a quick little gesture of dismay.
“Please don’t spoil it all now—just because we happen to be alone together for a minute or two. When are you going home to marry Miss Wardwell?”
“You are perfectly merciless,” he complained. “Must we talk about Elizabeth?”
“Ask your conscience,” she retorted.
“My conscience is busy and doesn’t want to be disturbed. One would think you had been born and bred in New England!”
“I wasn’t; I was born on this mountain.”
He sat down in the nearest chair and tried to remember that he was talking to the woman who was as good as promised to Poictiers Carfax.