“But,” I pleaded, “I don’t even know where we are going to!”
“Why, to Sutton Marle! Didn’t I tell you? It’s not far....”
“But I don’t know Sir Maurice! Really, Iris, how dare you let me in for this?”
“It is all right, dear, you are expected. I said to Hilary, not an hour ago on the telephone: ‘I am not for Sutton Marle unless I may bring my one friend.’”
“Well, I never heard such cheek! And why, Iris, am I your one friend?”
“Because once upon a time you shamed me of my shame. Because you did not hold me cheap. Because romance dies hard in you. Because, dear, I rather like you. And that is why I told Hilary that you were my friend and that I would not dare Sutton Marle without you, adding that as he had put you off for dinner it would be something for you to do.”
“Iris, you are laughing all the time, you who told me you were afraid!”
She glanced at me just then, and that second’s smile is like a wound on my memory. A car screamed and passed us, and she cried through the disordered air: “I am afraid, but of course I am gay, too! Haven’t I waited twelve years for my inheritance!”
The flame of the lights on the road ahead made a wall of blackness on each side of us. I was like a child in this blackness, and it seemed to me that her voice was the voice of the night. I did not know what to say. I said: “Iris, that girl will die without Napier.”
Minutes later, she said: “If people died of love I must have risen from the dead to be driving this car now!”