"What do you suppose I'm going to do with him?"
The glamour of youth in a garden, her rare humor and the cloudless day—I had managed well so far, but she pressed me hard. Jerry was no chattel to be bandied carelessly. I felt my body stiffening.
"Jerry is very sweet, Mr. Canby," she went on with that softness of voice that I had grown to understand. "He does anything, everything that I ask him to. It really is a great responsibility. Human judgment is so fallible, especially a woman's. Suppose I asked him to become a nihilist or President, or even both."
D—- the vixen. She was making game of me. But I struggled to hold my temper, taking her literally.
"Nihilism? Political or moral, Miss Van Wyck? To one of your means, the first would be inconvenient; to one of your affections, the other dangerous."
She flashed a narrow glance at me. "Touchée. I like the thrust from cover, but I can parry. Suppose that I said that I would relinquish Jerry."
"I'm not sure that you can," I replied coolly.
Our glances met again. She knew that I read her.
"Nothing is impossible to intelligence. I could send him away tomorrow, today—"
"But he would come back."