"Shall we go back now?" she asked; and they were half-way down to the siding and the private car before she spoke again. It took some little time to compass sufficient humility to make amends, and even then the admission came to no more than four words.
"I'm sorry, Mr. Ford."
"What for?" he asked, knowing only that he was coming to love her more blindly with every added minute of their companionship.
"For—for trying to be hateful." It was a humbler thing than any she had ever said to a man, but the raw sincerity of time and place and association was beginning to get into her blood.
"If it comes to that, there were two of us," he rejoined, matching her frankness. "And, as you remarked a while back, I was certainly the aggressor. Shall we call it a truce for the present?"
"If you will be generous enough."
"Oh, I am generosity itself, under ordinary conditions; but just now I'll admit that I am fearfully and wonderfully inhospitable. I can't help wishing most fervently that something had happened to prevent your uncle's coming."
"Is it uncle who is in the way?—or the pleasure party?"
"Both."
"We are negligible," she said, meaning the pleasurers.