“Perhaps it was. But the men who love you get rather beyond considering the matter of good or bad taste.”
She made a petulant gesture.
“Oh, don’t begin that old subject again. We’ve had it all out before. It’s finished.”
“It’s not finished.”
There was a clipped, curt force about the brief denial. The good-humoured, big-child mood in which Davilof had joyously narrated to her how he had circumvented the unfortunate Melrose had passed, leaving the man—turbulent and passionately demanding as of old.
“It’s not finished,” he repeated. “It never will be—till you’re my wife.”
Magda laughed lightly.
“Then I’m afraid it will have to remain unfinished—a continued-in-our-next kind of thing. For I certainly haven’t the least intention of becoming your wife. Do understand that I mean it. And please go away. You had no business to come down here at all.”
A smouldering fire lit itself in his eyes.
“No!” he said, taking a step nearer her. “No! I’m not going. I came because I can’t bear it any longer without you. Since you went away I’ve been half-mad, I think. I can’t eat or sleep! I can’t even play!”—he flung out his sensitive musician’s hands in a gesture of despair.