He flushed painfully and gnawed at his small mustache. Nina had scored heavily.
“I hope he does,” Jane went on with a sense of throwing a buoy to a drowning man, “because I’m sure I’d accept him.”
Worthington smiled gratefully and adored her in fervent silence.
“Men have stopped asking me to marry them lately,” sighed Nina. “It annoys me dreadfully.” She spoke of this misfortune with the same careless tone one would use with reference to a distasteful pattern in wall-paper.
“But think of the hearts you’ve broken,” said Gallatin.
“Or of the hearts I wanted to break but couldn’t,” she replied. “Yours, for instance, Phil.”
“You couldn’t have tried very hard,” he laughed.
“I didn’t know you were a satyr then,” she said, pushing her chair back from the table. “Your rubber, I think, Bibby. I’m sure we’d better stop, Dick, or you’ll never ask me here again.”