“The first plan sounds the safest, but would often be the most difficult of execution. Supposing the second miscarries and you don’t get bored?”
“Well, then I think—usually—there is an awful moment when I have to tell her I can’t afford both a motor and a wife; and to be motorless would kill me.”
A sudden little twitching at the corners made Lorraine’s mouth dangerously fascinating.
“Evidently you have never fallen in love with me,” she said, “for you have not been driven to either way of escape.”
He looked into her face with an answering humour, and a twinkle in his eyes as alluring as her smilling lips.
“Because when I fell in love with you I did it sensibly, and not foolishly,” was his answer; “instinct told me I couldn’t have you for my wife however much I wished it, so I said myself: ‘Flip, old boy, she’ll make a thundering good pal, you close with it,’ and I did.”
She made no comment, and he went on more seriously:
“You see, even if you became marriageable and I cut out the motor, you wouldn’t be attracted to an ordinary sort of cove like me. I suit you down to the ground as a pal, but it wouldn’t go any farther.”
“I wonder why you think that?”
“I don’t exactly think it—thinking is too much bother—but it’s just there, like a commonplace fact. You are all temperament, and high-strung nerves, and soul, and enthusiasm, and that sort of thing, which makes you a great actress. I’m just a two-legged, superior sort of animal, who hasn’t much brain, but knows what he likes, and usually does it without wasting time on pros and cons. Consequently, I’m just as likely to end in prison as anywhere else, and take it without much concern as all in the day’s work. You are more likely to end in a nunnery, as the most devout of all the nuns.”