"Because you have said enough to make me understand that you are doing it for my sake. That won't answer at all, you know."
"I don't see why it won't," Prime objected with sudden obtuseness.
"For the best possible reason; there is another woman to be considered. Sooner or later she will hear that you have broken with your best friend on account of a—a person she has never even heard of, and there will be consequences."
"Oh, if that is all"—and then he laughed. "You are either the most childlike bit of femininity the world has ever seen—or the most wilfully blind, Lucetta."
"'Cousin Lucetta,'" she corrected. "We are back among the conventions, now."
He took the implied readjustment of their relations rather hard.
"That wasn't worthy of you," he protested warmly. "We have been too much to each other in the past month to go back of the returns in that way, don't you think?"
"I can tell better what I think after I have climbed down into my little groove in the girls' school," she returned half-absently, and beyond this the talk concerned itself with their plans for the immediate future, Prime still insisting that he meant to see his table companion safely home and setting the difficulties and objections aside as one who had a perfect right to do so.
When the leisurely meal was finished Prime pushed his chair back and glanced at his watch.
"It is nearly ten o'clock," he announced. "Shall we go and meet Grider? Or shall we give him the cold shoulder he so richly deserves and go hunt up the railroad timetables? It is for you to say."