"What are you dreaming of, little girl?" he asked.
The odd flutter which his touch always caused was shaking Joan's heart; she tried, however, to face him indifferently, summoning up a smile.
"I was thinking," she corrected, "not dreaming."
"Well, the thoughts, then," asked the man, his fingers moved caressingly up and down her hand, "what were they?"
"I was thinking," began Joan slowly; her eyes fell from his and she stirred restlessly. "What did you mean just now when you spoke about drifting together?" she asked.
"Little Miss Pretence," he whispered, "as if you didn't know what I meant. If I were well off," he said suddenly (perhaps for the moment he really meant it), "I would make you marry me whether you had new ideas about it or not."
"Being well off wouldn't have anything to do with it," Joan answered, "it is more degrading to marry for money than anything else."
"Sometimes I believe you think that we are degrading altogether," the man said; he watched the colour creep into her face, "God knows we are not much to boast of, and that is the truth."
Joan struggled with the problem in her mind. "There ought not to be anything degrading about love," she said finally, and this time it was his eyes that fell away from hers.
For a little they sat silent, Joan, for some reason known only to herself, fighting against a strong inclination to cry. Gilbert had taken away his hands, he sat back in his chair, his feet thrust out, head down, eyes glooming at the dust. Joan stole a glance at him and felt a sudden intense admiration for the beauty of his clean-cut profile, his sleek, well-groomed head. Instinctively she put out a timid hand and touched him.