During this while they were walking north. All the way to Chestnut Street, Patricia was wondering whether to be most alarmed or amused. Of one thing she was assured, she was bored no longer. A sense of the violence done to her traditions hung like a millstone around her neck; and yet Patricia found herself peeping avidly through the hole to listen to the seductive voice of unconvention.
When Patricia succeeded in summoning her voice, she was not quite sure that it was her own.
“You’re an impertinent person,” she found herself saying.
“Can’t you forgive?”
“No.”
“Circumstances are against me,” he said, “but I give you my word, I’ve a place in my own city, a friend or two, and a certain proclivity for virtue.”
“Even if you do—speak to strange——”
“But I don’t. It was the blessed parasol. Otherwise I shouldn’t have dared.”
“And the proclivity for virtue——”