“Perhaps, if you knew her, you'd try Savina.”
“Not if it was to save me from dying. But I have no doubt of which you preferred. Did you?”
“Did I what?” He was aware that his speech was growing far louder than necessary.
“Call her Savina.”
“Yes!” He sat glaring at her in an anger which he felt swelling his neck.
Fanny's expression was obscure. At his admission she had shivered, as though it had reached her in the form of an actually threatened violence, and then she was rigid. “I knew that, all the while.” Her voice was low, with a pause between the words. “Savina”; she repeated the name experimentally. “Very pretty. Prettier to say than Fanny; yes, and newer. And, having called her that, you couldn't very well not kiss her, could you?”
However, his caution had again asserted itself over the dangers of a lost temper. “You have made so much of this up that you had better finish it yourself. Put what end you prefer on it; you don't need help.”
“The end,” she echoed, in a strange and smothered voice. “Is this it? But not yet.”
Lee's gaze rested on the magazine lying spread half on the Eastern symbolism of a rug and half on the bare polished flooring. “Your story is far more interesting than any in that,” he commented, with a gesture. “It's a pity you haven't turned your imagination to a better use.” This, he recognized, could not go on indefinitely. Fanny added:
“But I was wrong—you'd kiss her before you said Savina. That, I believe, is the way it works. It is really screaming when you think what you went to New York for—to protect Claire, to keep Peyton Morris out of Mina Raff's hands. And, apparently, you succeeded but got in badly yourself. What a pair of hypocrites you were: all the while worse than the others, who were at least excused by their youngness, ever could dream of being. What was the good of your contradicting me at first? I knew all along. I felt it.”