"Oh, if Madeleine is there, I should not go," she said with a touch of the old arrogance.
Then he told her of the frozen river, with its long, lonely, grey-white reaches. Her eyes kindled at this, he fancied, and in her answer was more of herself. "I have never trodden on ice in my life. Oh, I should be afraid—horribly afraid!"
For those who did not skate there were chairs, he urged—big, green-painted, sledge-like chairs, which ran smoothly. The ice was many inches thick; there was not the least need to be afraid.
But she only smiled, and did not answer.
"Then I can't persuade you?" he asked, and was annoyed at his own powerlessness. She can go with Eggis, he told himself, and simultaneously spoke out the thought. "I saw you on the bridge the other day."
But if he had imagined this would rouse her, he was wrong.
"Yes?" she said indifferently, and with that laming want of curiosity which prevents a subject from being followed up.
They sat in silence for some seconds. With her fingers, she pulled at the fringe of the tablecloth. Then, all of a sudden rising from her chair, she went over to the jug of roses, which she had placed on the writing-table, bent over the flowers with a kind of perceptible hesitation, and as suddenly came back to her seat.
"Suppose we went to-night." she said, and for the first time looked hard at Maurice.
"To-night?" he had echoed, before he could check himself.