"Have I ever pretended not to?" he asked.
"You told them down-stairs—"
He snapped his fingers as though what he had said there didn't count.
"Well, but you must be more than merely interested in me," I said.
"Interest is a pretty big thing, isn't it?" he said slowly.
"Not as big as love," I said.
"We're not going to talk about love," he replied. "We'll have to cut that out entirely, Nora."
"But I thought you said you wanted me to go on loving you, and that I was not to stop, no matter what happened."
He stirred uneasily at that, and then, after a moment, he said: