"Why?"
He looked at her quizzically.
"I'm wondering whether I'd better lie out of it; say I knew you were on your way to breakfast, and that I hoped to have a later opportunity, and all that. Shall I do it?"
She did not reply at once. The undeceived inner self was telling her that here lay the parting of the ways; that on her answer would be built the structure, formal or confidential, of their future intercourse. Loyalty to the halo demanded self-restraint; but every other fiber of her was reaching out for a reëstablishment of the old boy-and-girl openness of heart and mind. Her hesitation was only momentary.
"You are just as rude and Gothic as you used to be, aren't you, Tom? Don't you know, I'm childishly glad of it; I was afraid you might be changed in that way, too,—and I don't want to find anything changed. You needn't be polite at the expense of truth—not with me."
He looked at her with love in his eyes.
"This time, you mean—or all the time."
"All the time, if you like."
"I do like; there has got to be some one person in this world to whom I can talk straight, Ardea."
She laughed a little laugh of half-constraint.