He chuckled. “I’m not sure about that. Did you like ‘The Saint’s Walk’?”
“It was beautiful.”
“It was all about you, let me tell you. You in that red frock you had.”
She shook her head. “Oh, no, no.”
“But I am telling you that it was. It was an exercise perhaps—an exercise in the scenic. It may well be that there are no Saints—but either you can look the part, or I can see you in it.”
She may have had a sense that this kind of talk was intolerable, and her silence may have expressed it. Or she may have been ashamed to find out that it was not intolerable. At any rate, she made no attempt to break down the arm’s length at which he chose to hold her, while he continued to survey her, and to entertain himself.
“You cling to your saintship? Is that it?”
She raised her eyebrows, not her head. “You have just told me that I am not a saint. I think that you know very well.”
“If you were—I suppose you mean—you would not be talking to me under the Royal Oak?”
She laughed ruefully. “No, indeed. I ought not to be here!”