“What are you laughing at?”
She lifted her head and looked at him with eyes narrowed to slits, murmuring,
“You, trying to get rid of me and being so polite and helpless. It’s too pathetic for words.”
“If it’s pathetic, why do you laugh?” he said, laughing himself, he did not know why.
She made no immediate reply and he looked at her, languidly interested and admiring. For the first time he realized that she was a pretty girl, with her glistening coils of blond hair and a pearl-white skin, just now suffused with pink.
“Why did you think I wanted to get rid of you?” he asked.
“You’ve almost said so,” she answered. “And then—well, I can see you do.”
“How? What have I done that you’ve seen?”
“Not any especial thing, but—I think you do.”
He felt too weak and indifferent to tell polite falsehoods. Leaning his head on the pillow that stood up at his back, he said,