He glanced sharply at her.
“But,” said Freda, “the modern way is not to let your parents put that sort of thing over. Truly. One simply says, ‘Mother—I will wed the girl of my choice.’”
“You are making fun of me.”
“Well—who wouldn’t?” Freda collapsed into a laugh. “Here I sit, listening to you make the funniest clandestine love in the world. You feel you’ve got to do it—to uphold your reputation as a—Frenchman! And if you slipped into a serious situation you’d be aghast. You don’t care a thing about me and you know it.”
“Ah, don’t I?” He looked for a moment as if he did.
“You probably care a little about corrupting me. Now look here, Ted, please stop talking such nonsense. You can’t shock me and it’s pretty hard to insult me—I am a little ashamed of not being more insulted—but you probably could make me very angry by persisting in trying to involve me in petty vice. In the first place I don’t like it. In the second place, if I ever went in for vice, it would be on a larger scale than you could dream of. I haven’t the slightest intention of—being French! You’d better go along and make love to Bob Brownley. She’ll bring some excitement into your life, I think. The reason I’m not more angry with you is that you were, indirectly, the cause of the greatest bit of luck that ever happened to me.”
“What?”
“I wouldn’t dream of telling you. But I’m awfully obliged for the tea—truly. It set me up. Shall we go?”
He was not so easy to repulse. He got up and pulled his chair around to her side of the table.
“Freda,” he tried to take her hand, “if I gave up Bob would you let me see you?”