“You forget that I remember the signs.”
At this I stared at her in such futile anger that she laughed to herself, well content.
“But I quite approve! An excellent match for you!”
Then she deliberately dropped her muff, and as I stooped to pick it up, she leaned over and pinched my ear.
“Have you forgotten that, mon ami?”
The muff was scented with the perfume I knew. I came up angry and baffled.
“My dear Davy, if you are not going to pay me some attention, you may as well go right to your brother and tell all. The situation is evident.”
I left her in a vindictive, smoldering rage,—in one of those moods of violence into which she had thrown me a hundred times, out of her malicious pleasure. Does she love me or hate me? Which is the explanation? As for myself, the anger she awakened frightened me, for before I was confident of my utter indifference. Is it possible that by some baneful trick of habit there can remain a vestige of the old tyranny over my senses? It is unthinkable! If only I could go to Ben! But no, that is impossible! And for a week, while we three are under the same roof, this hideous comedy must go on!
* * * * *
As I go back over my interview with Anne, I am somewhat puzzled. Why was I so brutally direct? I should like to feel that it was an honest effort to repel her: yet I wonder if I am as honest as all that and if underneath is not the intuitive knowledge that just such an attitude is what would draw her closer to me? How difficult it is to know our real motives!