"What are you saying to me?" she cried.
Rackham was very near her, his head bent, his voice low and passionate in her ears.
"What I have always wanted to say to you," he said. "You guessed it, didn't you? You were a little afraid of me;—just a little. You've been trying to put it off.... But don't you remember the first time we met—and that afternoon down by the spinney, when I told you I was your friend?"
She began to shiver. His hand, shutting the idle fan, was imprisoning hers as it clenched itself on her knee.
"I was not listening to you!" she cried desperately. "I was not thinking of you. How dare you?"
"What were you thinking of then?" said Rackham. "Not of Barnaby, who has gone back to his first love and forgotten that you exist."
"He sent you to me," she said piteously.
"Oh, that was a lie," said Rackham. "He didn't even trouble as much as that."
She had sprung to her feet and her face was as white as ashes. For how long had this man been telling her that he loved her? She had been deaf to him, had caught his words without understanding their import, murmuring "Yes" to him, while her eyes and her heart were searching for one figure to pass in the dizzy scene below.
"You are mad," she said.