She made a reluctant little gesture of assent; some such signal of acquiescence as Marie Antoinette may have given the waiting headsman.
"You have been afraid every day lest I should begin a second time to press you for an answer, haven't you?"
She could not thrust and parry with him. They were past all that.
"Yes," she admitted briefly.
"You break my heart, Elinor," he said, after a long pause. "But"—with a sudden tightening of the lips—"I'm not going to break yours."
She understood him, and her eyes filled quickly with the swift shock of gratitude.
"If you had made a study of womankind through ten lifetimes instead of a part of one, you could not know when and how to strike truer and deeper," she said; and then, softly: "Why can't you make me love you, Brookes?"
He took his foot from the brake-pedal, and for ten seconds the released car shot down the slope unhindered. Then he checked the speed and answered her.
"A little while ago I should have said I didn't know; but now I do know. It is because you love David Kent: you loved him before I had my chance."
She did not deny the principal fact, but she gave him his opportunity to set it aside if he could—and would.