She gave just the suggestion of a sneer and turned deliberately away.
He felt the force of the unspoken reproof:
"I beg your pardon," he said humbly.
She went on as if she had not heard the offensive suggestion: "So you see we're both, in a way, at the crossroads."
He seized her hand fiercely: "Let me take you away out of it all!" he cried.
She withdrew her hand slowly.
"No," she said, "not just now. I'm not in a bolting mood to-day."
He moved away. She watched him. Then she called him to her. Something in the man attracted this strange nature. She could not analyse or define the attraction. But the impelling force was there.
He went to her.
Ethel spoke to him for the first time softly, languorously, almost caressingly: