“Oh, I could have buried it deeper still, but I didn’t choose to. I deliberately shook it out of its cave where it was comfortably hibernating, and put all the rest in its place.”
“Why didn’t you do it before? I can’t be the first young and ardent admirer you have met. You are thirty-four—you have been free eight years—it is incredible. Is it merely the first good chance you have had? I don’t know whether I like being your stalking horse or not.”
Julia leaned her elbows on the table and looked him straight in the eyes.
“That has something to do with it, but not all. If you had come a year earlier, when I couldn’t have left for a minute, it would have been different, of course. But there was this sudden lull, and, you see, I am frightfully in love.”
The shot was so unexpected that Tay turned white, then the red rushed to his face. He had been lounging. He sat up stiffly and leaned forward.
“Julia!” he said. “Be careful. I shan’t stand for any flirting.”
“Oh, I’m much too young to flirt—I mean I hadn’t heard the word when I left Nevis. Of course I’m in love with you—fancy I have been for years. I don’t mind in the least if you no longer are in love with me.”
“I’m in love all right, but I’d like mighty well to know which of the several Julias you’ve treated me to I’m in love with.”
“Don’t you like this one?”
“I’d like nothing better than to know that you really were eighteen and that I could teach you all you would ever know.”