“Like the Kilkenny cats,” she assented, absent-mindedly.
She was now stubbornly determined to regain possession of that dangerous glance. “Isn’t it grotesque,” she went on, “that contemptible, weak-souled people repeatedly disregard scruples that give pause to the strong?”
Dare held his breath, and his profile showed that he was pressing his teeth against his lip. They had never steered so near the reefs in all their skilfully navigated acquaintanceship. Louise pulled weakly at the grass.
Frankness had been their support up to the present, and each was privately acknowledging that they could no longer depend on it.
Silence. Louise felt that she ought to do something to divert his emotions into more familiar channels. “I wish I were a man,” she said, and the effort of uttering words made her conscious of the dryness of her throat. She also had a freakishness of breath to contend with.
Dare collected himself, sat up, with his back partly turned to her, so that his eyes looked over the plain. The breeze had gone down and the afternoon light seemed to be an intrinsic property of the objects it gilded rather than an emanation from the sun.
“What would you do if you were?” he asked.
“The incomparably splendid things you do,” she promptly replied.
“I’ve come pretty near doing some incomparably asinine things.”
“But you’ve stopped short. I would have, too, of course. Besides,” she hesitated, then decided on one final plunge of frankness, “in a world full of people who don’t do splendid things, you could almost have pleaded justification in not stopping short, I imagine,—if not actual provocation.”