"Oh, you foolish Nicky," Desmond said.
He repeated himself over and over again, and each time she had an answer, and the answers had a cumulative effect.
"There isn't any debt. You don't pay anything--"
"I didn't do it for that, you silly boy."
"What did I do it for? I did it for fun. You couldn't draw a thing like that for anything else. Look at it--"
--"Well, if you want to be horrid and calculating about it, think of the lunches and the dinners and the theatre tickets and the flowers you've given me. Oh, and the gallons and gallons of petrol. How am I ever to pay you back again?"
Thus she mocked him.
"Can't you see how you're spoiling it all?"
And then, passionately: "Oh, Nicky, please don't say it again. It hurts."
She turned on him her big black looking-glass eyes washed bright, each with one tear that knew better than to fall just yet. He must see that she was holding herself well in hand. It would be no use letting herself go until he had forgotten his Moving Fortress. He was looking at the beastly thing now, instead of looking at her.