"Why, hang it all, Myra, I've just been trying to make love to you and asking you to give me a kiss, and you wouldn't. Now—oh, dash it all, I don't know what to make of you, my dear. You are a most puzzling girl!"
"And you are the most exasperatingly dull man," Myra retorted, still half-laughing, half-crying. "Oh, Tony, my dear, take care of me and love me terribly if you want to keep me. Hold me fast and grapple me to you with hooks of steel, or you will lose me."
She almost hurled herself into Tony's arms, buried her face in his shoulder, and burst into tears. Tony did not know what to make of it at all, and he felt utterly helpless. Agitatedly he patted her on the back and stroked her hair.
"Myra, for heaven's sake don't cry," he said, in what was intended to be a soothing tone. "You make me feel so bally awful. I've never seen you crying before, and I can't make out what is the matter. What on earth has upset you, darling? You're quite hysterical. Hadn't I better ring for your maid, dear?"
Poor Tony did not realise how sadly he was blundering, how sorely he was failing in an emergency.
"Oh, why can't you understand!" burst out Myra passionately. "Why can't you love in the right way? Don't pat my head and my back as if I were a pet dog, you ninny! Tony, I—I—oh, I can't bear it!"
She broke from him and rushed from the room, banging the door behind her.
"Well I'm sunk!" muttered Tony, distractedly running his fingers through his sandy hair. "What on earth is a fellow to do in these circumstances? I hope to goodness Myra won't carry on like this after we are married, or I shall never know where I am. I wonder what upset her?"
Troubled in mind, he took his departure, and on his way to his Club he was fortunate enough to meet Lady Fermanagh.
"My dear Tony, all women are more or less creatures of impulse, liable to do the most unexpected and quixotic things," her worldly-wise Ladyship told him, when he had explained what had happened and asked her to advise him what to do. "That is what makes us so interesting. We do not understand ourselves, and if men understood us we should cease to interest or attract them."