He made no reply but by an impatient gesture.
"And you really don't wish to know?"He sat silent and still. "Then, I'll tell you: I lost the only reason I had for going," and she and Kitty exchanged a good deal of laughter of an innocent kind. The mood and the motive with which he had sought her made him feel that he was being unendurably trifled with and he rose. But at the same moment Kitty effected an escape and he and Amy were left alone. She looked quickly at the door through which Kitty had vanished, dropped her arms at her sides and uttered a little sigh of inexpressible relief.
"Sit down," she said, repeating her grimace at absent Kitty.
"You are not going! I want to talk to you. Isn't Kitty dreadful?"
Her voice and manner had changed. There was no one now before whom she could act—no one to whom she could show that she could slight him, play with him. Furthermore, she had gotten some relief from the tension of her ill humour by what she had already said; and now she really wanted to see him. The ill humour had not been very deep; nothing in her was very deep. And she was perfectly sincere again—for the moment. What does one expect?
"Don't look so solemn," she said with mock ruefulness. "You make me feel as though you had come to baptize me, as though you had to wash away my sins. Come here!" and she laid her hand invitingly on the chair that Kitty had vacated at her side.
He stood bolt upright in the middle of the room, looking down at her in silence. Then he walked slowly over and took the seat. She folded her hands over the back of her own chair, laid her cheek softly down on them and looked up with a smile—subdued, submissive, fond, absolutely his.
"Don't be cross!" she pleaded, with a low laugh full of maddening music to him.
He could not speak to her or look at her for anger and shame and disappointment; so she withdrew one hand from under her cheek and folded it softly over the back of his—his was pressed hard down on the cap of his knee—and took hold of his big finders one by one, caressing them.
"Don't be cross!" she pleaded. "Be good to me! I'm tired and unhappy!"