“I’m glad to know that. I had a sneaking impression she did interest you—vitally.”
“You amazing man! Now, why should she?”
“There you go,” he declared furiously, “driving me into a corner and forcing me to say crazy things so you will not have to say them. How like a woman!”
She laughed softly. Evidently she was enjoying his discomfiture immensely. “Don’t evade the issue, Dan. Why did you have that sneaking impression that Tamea did interest me—vitally?”
“Well, after that night Mel was up to dinner—that was a bit awkward, you know. And you two do not like each other.”
“If you mean that I decline to fall on that young hussy’s neck and make over her——”
“Don’t call her a hussy, Maisie. That doesn’t sound like you, and besides, she isn’t a hussy. She’s a poor, lonely, misunderstood young girl and——”
“And making desperate love to you,” Maisie taunted him.
“Well,” he chuckled, “that doesn’t annoy me particularly. In fact I feel complimented.” Maisie winced. There was a note of sincerity in his tone that robbed it of any hint of badinage. Dan continued: “The fact that she is making desperate love to me—it would be useless and stupid to endeavor to hide that fact—seemed to me to constitute sufficient ground for my suspicion that you would prefer not to discuss her.”
Maisie turned abruptly and faced him with wide, curious eyes. There was cleverly simulated amusement in those sea-blue orbs, and Dan’s train of thought running his single-track mind was completely ditched.