She made a little face before she said meekly.
"They don't seem so anxious to cultivate me, you see, as the men."
He chuckled. "I'd noticed that."
"You have no right to start being unexpected, Cyprian, at this stage of things. It's so humiliating when I have been browsing contentedly on the belief that I can foresee all that you are likely to foresee and notice."
"It is not the first time, is it, that I have made an effort to exceed my rights?"
"Please resist the temptation to go on driving it home. According to the Book you should be striding the room muttering dire threats through your clenched teeth."
"Concerning your behaviour or his?"
Then, as she wriggled her annoyance, the laughter in the heart of him materialized.
"My dear, I am incapable, at the moment, of taking anything seriously except the fact that you have come back to me. Which is a matter rather for rejoicing than for imprecations. If I seem to pass off this occurrence as unimportant, it is only because it is so over-shadowed by the importance of the realization that I exist again for you."
"I have never imagined you existed for anyone else," she protested indignantly. "Another time you'll know that when it looks as if I were thinking of someone else it's really that I am concentrating extra hard on something connected with your happiness."