“I have not the slightest reason to be either pleased or displeased with you,” she jested in return. “But tell me, what was your idea?”
“Then you are interested in it?”
“If you will answer candidly, yes. But you must be candid!” and she threatened him with her finger.
“Well,” he began, “I thought of you as a very cultured woman, as a very interesting woman—I still think all that—and ... as a woman who cared nothing for the world beyond her own sphere; and this ... this I can no longer think. And I feel almost inclined to say, at the risk of your looking on me as very strange, that I am sorry no longer to be able to think of you in that way. I would almost rather not have met you here....”
He laughed, to soften what might sound strange in his words. She looked at him, her eyelashes flickering with amazement, her lips half-opened; and suddenly it struck her that she was looking into his eyes for the first time. She looked into his eyes and saw that they were a dark, very dark grey around the black depth of the pupil. There was something in his eyes, she could not say what, but something magnetic, as though she could never again take away her own from them.
“How strange you can be sometimes!” she said mechanically: the words came intuitively.
“Oh, please don’t be angry!” he almost implored her. “I was so glad when you spoke kindly to me. You were a little distant to me when I saw you last; and I should be so sorry if I put you out. Perhaps I am strange, but how could I possibly be commonplace with you? How could I possibly, even if you were to take offence?... Have you taken offence?”
“I ought to, but I suppose I must forgive you, if only for your candour!” she said, laughing. “Otherwise your remarks were anything but gallant.”
“And yet I did not mean it ungallantly.”
“Oh, no doubt!” she jested.