"Do, please. It is your great charm!"
"You are positively hateful!"
"Well, why did you encourage Sassoon, then?" She looked at him with a little malice in her eyes.
"I suppose you want to think yourself one of many?"
This was too near the mark. He answered evasively:
"All I wish is to be your father confessor, you know!"
This simulation of friendship was another thing that always aroused her. She wished to punish him, and began to embroider.
"Yes, I encourage Sassoon," she said, leaning on the table, nodding in emphasis, and switching a celery stalk among the glasses venomously, like the tail of an irritated leopard. "Harrigan Blood, too. And I have my reasons. You think I am a wild little creature who never looks ahead. Quite wrong! Everything is planned out. Everything will be settled—definitely—soon!"
"When?"
"On my twenty-third birthday—on the tenth of March. Remember that date!"