“You’ve been drinking!”
“No, you’ve been drinking and I’ve been thinking. You know, Lissa, it’s well enough to play off a few weeks of nonsense abroad; something about Monaco and Florence get into your blood. But, after all, a fellow must think ahead and so ought a woman. I want to be the soap-and-water-washed sort I was. Makes me wish I hadn’t danced a step—had a hammer-toe or a club-foot so I couldn’t!”
“You’ve been talking to Bliss,” she said sharply.
“He does jerk me up now and then.”
Lissa threw back her head and closed her eyes. “Have I wasted the finest love of my live on a cad?” she asked of some unseen presence. “Have I told my secrets, the secrets of my inner shrine—”
“Not inner shrine,” Mark could not refrain from adding, “inner shrink!”
Lissa sprang to her feet. “You young idiot,” she said between set teeth, “you know I’ll not let you go until I’m ready to—I never do—I’ll show the whole pack of prudes that I can beat their game—”
Then the cad in the boy, which is in every boy, came to the surface and battled for supremacy in his handsome face right and wrong; he smiled in smug fashion symbolic of the fact that he had passed up the struggle.
“Maybe I’ve just wanted to see how you cared,” he suggested. “Got any more of that stuff to drink?” He sat on the tête-à-tête and, waiting until she poured it out, let him celebrate the defeat of his better half. “My word, Thurley has a long road to go!”