‘Perhaps not, but give it me all the same. It’s not enough to know a thing; one wants to be told it sometimes.’
‘Oh, that is just like a silly woman—never believing a man cares for her unless he goes on telling her so twice a minute. Oh, Kingston, don’t let us be so childish. These things don’t need to be talked about. I hate talking about them. It isn’t decent. The more one feels the less one should say. Only kitchen-maids chatter about their love affairs, and wear their hearts on their sleeves.’
‘Anyhow, that’s better than wearing it in someone else’s pocket, as so many others do.... Gundred, does your soul never take off its stays? Does it always live in public, on view, in full Court dress and train and feathers?’
‘Kingston—dear Kingston, I think you must be a little bilious. I am not always in public. Here I am alone with you—yes?’
‘Alone? Oh dear, no! You are always acting, always posing to half a hundred people in the room whom I can’t see. They prevent you from ever speaking honestly to me, as I speak to you. They dictate the way you walk, the chair you sit in, every word and action of your day.’
‘I don’t understand you, Kingston. A woman has so much more to think of than a man in some ways. Surely ... you know by now that I—well, that I do care for you. You mustn’t ask me to be always saying so. You wouldn’t like it if I did. Do be reasonable. One has to behave decently—yes? Our points of view are so different. It seems to me that I tell you far too much—sometimes I think I am shameless and horrid—and yet you—you think me cold and unsatisfactory.’
‘Can’t you realize how a man starves for a little warmth, Gundred?’
‘I hate to think of men like that; I am sure you are not one of them. Anyhow, I hope we shall never condescend to their horrid level. You are engaged to me, Kingston, and that ought to be quite enough.... It is for me.’
She glanced at him with gleaming eyes. He heard the cool, level tone, and missed the gleam. He sighed.
‘And some people have thought me cold and fish-blooded,’ he thought, in a spasm of irritation. But clearly it was useless to dash himself against the firm rock of Gundred’s placidity.