"Gilbert, let's pretend we're married, just for this evening," she said, looking at him with dancing eyes.
"What do you mean, Rita?" he said in a hoarse whisper.
The girl half-smiled, flushed a little, and then patted the black sleeve of his coat.
"It's so nice to be together," she whispered. "I am so happy with you. London is so wonderful with you to show it to me. I only wish it could go on always."
He caught her wrist with his hot hand. "It can, always, if you wish," he said.
She started at the fierce note in his voice. "Hush," she said. "You mustn't talk like that." Her face became severe and reproving. She turned it towards the stage.
The remainder of the evening alternated between wild fits of gaiety and rather moody silences. There was absolutely nothing of the crisp, delightful friendship of the drive to Brighton. A new relation was established between them, and yet it was not, as yet, capable of any definition at all.
She was baffling, utterly perplexing. At one moment he thought her his, really in love with him, prepared for all that might mean, at another she was a shy and rather dissatisfied school girl. The nervous strain within him, as the fires of his passion burned and crackled, was intense. He fed the flame with alcohol whenever he had an opportunity.
All the old reverence and chivalry of that ideal friendship of which he had sung so sweetly vanished utterly.
A faint, but growing brutality of thought came to him as he considered her. Her innocence did not seem so insistent as before. He could not place her yet. All he knew was that she was certainly not the Rita of his dreams.