“Kindly,” he said, softly bending his compelling glance on her, “as a woman treats a man who loves her.”
“Mr. Essex,” she said, turning on him with all the dignity she had at her command, “we don’t seem to understand each other. The last time I saw you, you insulted and humiliated me. I don’t know how it can be, but you seem to have forgotten all about it. I haven’t. I never can, and I don’t want to see you or speak to you or think of you ever again in this world.”
“What makes you think I’ve forgotten?” he said, suddenly dropping his voice to a key that thrilled with meaning.
He saw the remark shake her into startled half-comprehension. That she still took his words at their face value proved to him again how strangely simple she was.
“What makes you think I’ve forgotten?” he repeated.
She raised her eyes in arrested astonishment and met his, now seeming suddenly to have become charged with memories of the scene in the cottage.
“How could I forget?” he murmured. “Do you really think I could ever forget that evening?”
She turned away speechless with embarrassment and anger, recollections of the kisses of that ill-omened interview burning in her face.
“When a man wounds the one woman in the world he cares for, can he ever forget, do you think?”
He again had the gratification of seeing her flash a look of artless surprise at him.