“It’s piracy!” said Miss Wych contemptuously.
“That’s right,” said the lean young man with the eyes of trouble.
“You say you aren’t playing,” Miss Wych bitterly complained, “but you are upsetting me very much. A little chivalry, sir, would help you to see how terrified I am.”
“I am terrified, too,” said the young stranger, “of this happiness. It can’t possibly last, can it? It’s too enormous.”
Miss Wych thought: “He’s gone mad!”
“I really don’t know why you ask me,” she panted spitefully, “whether it can last or not. How should I know? And it’s perfectly absurd, what we are doing. It is perfectly absurd. I don’t know you, you don’t know me, and that’s that. Anyone would think we were babies!”
“But that’s just what I am! For,” said the young stranger, “I am exactly one week old.”
Miss Wych thought: “And he talks like it!”
Miss Wych said: “Really! How interesting.”
“I am one week old,” the stranger said, “because it was exactly a week ago that I first saw you. And you needn’t laugh!”