“No! We are not friends.” She spoke with suppressed violence, and breaking a twig from the tree overshadowing her, she threw it from her, as though the action were a relief.
He sat up, looking up into her face, his hands clasped round his knees.
“That means you haven’t forgiven me?”
“It means that I judge and despise you,” she said passionately; “and that it was not an attraction to me to find you here—quite the reverse!”
“Yet here you are—sitting with me in this garden—and you are looking delicious! That dress becomes you so—you are so graceful—so exquisitely graceful. And you never found a more perfect setting than this place—these lawns and trees—and the old college walls. Oxford was waiting for you, and you for Oxford. Are you laughing at me?”
“Naturally!”
“I could rave on by the hour if you would listen to me.”
“We have both something better to do—thank goodness! May I ask if you are doing any work?”
He laughed.
“Ten hours a day. This is my first evening out since March. I came to meet you.”