"If you accept my youth and gaiety, I have good hopes of convincing you of that."
She withdrew her hand from his ardent clasp, as if he had been too presumptuous, or at least premature. Lionel cursed himself for a coxcomb and hastened to make his peace.
"You are not angry?" he asked anxiously. "I have not offended you——?"
"No," she said, after an infinitesimal pause. "I am ... not ... angry."
There was a query in her tone that restored his self-confidence, a quality of which he had usually good store. With a resolute movement he took her in his arms. Possibly she was too amazed to protest; certainly at first she made not the least resistence to the onset. It was not until his lips touched hers that she gave a little cry as of shame. "No, no!" she pleaded. "You must not ... my husband ..."
Lionel was a man of the world, but as chance would have it, he was a man of honor, too. He dropped the lady like a hot coal at the appalling word, and sat back rigid in his own corner of the cab. His companion, mastered by emotion, covered her face with her hands. Presently she peeped between her fingers and repeated his words, almost his accent.
"You are ... not ... angry?"
"I am never angry with a woman," he replied; but the lie was obvious. She laid a soft hand upon his arm.
"You have not told me your name yet," she murmured. "I must always cherish in my memory a brave man who is not too brave to be a gentleman."
He moved uneasily, reflecting that noblesse sometimes finds it difficult to oblige.