“Did I, really? What a boor you must have thought me!”
“Oh, I did”—fervently. “And then there was the day of the Fêtes des Narcisses, when I hit you with a rosebud by mistake. You glared at me as if I’d committed one of the seven deadly sins.”
“So you had—if occupying the thoughts of a ‘confirmed misogynist’ who had forsworn women and all their ways counts as one of them!”
A silence fell between them. The lightly uttered speech suddenly recalled the past, and each was vividly conscious of the bitter root from which it sprang. The man’s face darkened as though he would push aside the memory.
“But that’s past,” said Ann at last, very softly.
He turned to her curiously.
“So you know, then?”
She flushed.
“Yes, I know—I heard. People talk. But I’ve not been gossiping, Eliot—truly.”
A brief smile crossed his face.