“Loving a man,” cried Amber.
Josephine’s flush vanished. It was her turn to stare. She stared as a cold search-light stares.
Then she said coldly:
“I dislike your Mr. Winwood—I—I—I wonder if I don’t actually hate him. Yes, I feel that I must actually hate him or I shouldn’t be looking forward to meeting him so eagerly as I do. That’s the truth for you, my dear Amber—the truth—whatever that may mean.”
“I wish you were not coming on Friday,” said Amber, after a long, thoughtful and embarrassing pause.
“So do I. But I swear to you that nothing shall prevent my lunching with you on Friday,” cried Josephine.
And then after a moment of gravity which Amber thought might be simulated in a kind of spirit of parody of her own gravity, Josephine burst out laughing and then hurried away.
Amber felt completely puzzled by her attitude. She did not know what to make of her flushing—of her frowning—of her pouting—least of all of her outburst of laughter.
She thought over what Josephine had said; but, of course, that was no assistance to her.
If one cannot arrive at any satisfactory interpretation of a girl’s flushing and frowning and laughing one is not helped forward to any appreciable extent by recalling her words.