He smiled.
"I mean—you know—"
"By Jove, if she does know, they didn't divide the supply of brains between us equally," Denis observed.
"I only mean that I don't want you to—to get thinking that—you know you said before that I looked as if I were thinking of something nice for you—well, you won't think I was, will you?"
"Oh, indeed, I will now! Denis, can't you see there's a secret somewhere? Oh, how lovely! Ted, I do love secrets. Is it something very nice?"
He looked into her teasing face with an expression of almost ludicrous dismay.
"I—wish you wouldn't!" he muttered so gravely that she stopped laughing.
"Well, I won't!" she said. "I'm quite sure there's nothing nice going to happen anywhere or any time, and it'll be all the more a surprise, won't it? Oh, Ted, I didn't mean it," she added remorsefully. "It was all fun, all smoke—"
"'There's no smoke without a fire,'" Denis told the ceiling.
"Mine was pipe smoke," she rejoined.