This, she supposed, was a fling at her, and she stiffened under it. But when she spoke it was to ignore the innuendo, intended or not. For, wherever they might be led, she hoped it would not be into sordid quarrelling.
"It begins to be rather obvious that I should not have come. Doesn't it?" she asked.
"Well?"
"Now, if I turn back——"
"To the house?"
"And then to mamma and papa, in Coloma. And then to San Francisco."
"And I?"
"If you would go with me as far as the house——"
She saw how his body straightened, how his broad shoulders squared. There was something eloquent in the gesture; Mark King, with no toleration of a clutter of side issues, came straight to the main barrier, which must be swept aside for good and all, or which must be skirted and so passed and relegated to the limbo of dead hopes.
"Do you love me, Gloria?" he demanded. "As lovers love? As I have loved you? As a wife should love her husband?"