Pansy flushed.
"I didn't know anything about you then. And you know I didn't," she said with indignation.
"Or you wouldn't have listened to a word of love from me."
Much as he tried to hate the girl, now that he was with her he could not keep the word "love" off his lips.
Pansy felt she was not shining. She wanted to apologise, but he seemed determined to be disagreeable. What was more, she had a feeling she was dealing with quite a different man from the Raoul Le Breton who had won and broken her heart within a week. She put it down to her own treatment of him and it made her all the more anxious for an understanding. She could not bear to see him looking at her in that hard, cruel way, as if she were his mortal enemy—someone who had injured him past all forgiveness.
"It's not that I want to talk about at all," she said desperately.
"What do you want to talk about, then?" he asked, his cruel smile deepening.
"I want to say how sorry I am that I was angry with you that night. But I ... I didn't know you were ... are——"
Pansy stopped before she got deeper into the mire.
She was going to say "a coloured man," but with him standing before her, her lips refused to form the words.