“Coming home with me for dinner, Deb?”
“Yes. Antonia——”
“Well?” They had walked along in silence for a little while, after quitting Zoe’s flat.
“You’re thinking that I ought not to have stayed down at Seaview with Cliffe.”
“Why should you suppose I’m a prig who can’t mind her own business, Deb?”
“There was no harm in it,” Deb pleaded, as though Antonia had condemned her.
“That’s just it”—slowly. Then: “No, Deb, don’t make me—please——”
“I know. I know. The same whatever I do. No harm in it, but you wouldn’t have done it yourself.”
“Not with Cliffe.”
Deb assented in anxious self-defence: “One might as well be staying under the roof of a nice old lady.”