"Desperately in love?" she said harshly. "And do you intend me to understand, Margaret, that you are desperately in love with Mr. Challoner in return?"
"Oh dear, no!" the lady addressed replied calmly enough. "Though if I were, I see no occasion for your scolding me about it, Nannie.—What does make you so restless and cross to-night? However, if you're determined to be uncomfortable, I'm not—so I shall sit down here in your chair. Did you see the lightning then? No, I'm not the least silly about Challoner; but then I should be very sorry to be silly about any man. I don't think it dignified for a woman to be in a wild state of mind about her fiancé. It's not nice. I like Challoner well enough to marry him, and well enough not to mind his making love to me. That's quite sufficient, I think."
Jealous curiosity pricked Joanna. She stopped in her agitated walk and stood stretching out her right hand and gazing abstractedly at it.
"What—what precisely do you mean when you speak of his making love to you, Margaret?" she said, in a thin, urgent whisper.
"Really, for a person who plumes herself upon being particularly refined you do say the most singular things, Joanna!" the other exclaimed, laughing. "You can hardly expect me to go into details. Making love is making love."
"Kissing your hand—do you mean?" Joanna gasped, in awestruck accents, a dry sob rising in her throat.
"One's hand? Why, anybody might kiss one's hand. Challoner's proceedings, I'm afraid, are considerably more unrestrained than that. But I positively can't go into details. How extraordinary you are, Nannie! Doesn't it occur to you there are questions which one doesn't ask?"
Streaks of pain shot across the back of Joanna's right hand, as though it were struck again and again with a rod. Moaning, just audibly, she thrust it within the open bosom of her white négligé, and laid her left hand upon it, fondling it as one striving to soothe some sorely wounded creature.
Margaret leaned back in the easy-chair, fingering her little fan, a sleekness, a suggestion of almost animal content in her expression and attitude.
"No, really I can't explain any further," she said, laughing a little. "I'm quite hot enough as it is, and refuse to make myself any hotter. You must wait till somebody makes love to you, I'm afraid, Nannie, if you want to know exactly what the process consists in. An object-lesson would be necessary, and I am hardly equal to supplying that."