“I believe you’d see through a stone wall.”
“Say a gauze curtain with an arc-light behind it. I fancy I’ll get a lot of fun out of life.”
“I fancy you will.” His tones were as dry as his tongue.
“And I’d get a lot more with you than I could by myself——”
“But I thought marriage to you was anathema.” Bylant hardly knew what he was saying. What in heaven’s name was this incalculable girl driving at?
“In the commonplace sense, of course. But with us it would be different. We’d just hitch up as a matter of form, and then we could be together always.”
There was no rising inflection in her cool clear voice. Nor any accent of finality. She assumed, beyond question, that the arrangement would be as agreeable to him as to her royal self.
For a moment Bylant did not raise his eyes; he had kept them carefully lowered. Then he sat up and lit a cigarette. His tan did not conceal his pallor but his eyes were as calm and steady as those hard black diamonds opposite.
“I think I’ll accept your offer of marriage,” he said lightly. “You took my breath away or I shouldn’t have been so ungallant as to hesitate—seemingly. I hope you didn’t think me that?” His voice was whimsically anxious.
“I know men are not accustomed to being proposed to even now, although I wouldn’t put it past some of the girls. But I knew you’d take forever to summon up your courage, so why not take the bull by the horns—bad simile, that. You’re just a dear old ox.”