"Go on!"
"I think I'd better not."
"You can say anything to me. I'm never in a hurry to take offense."
"I was going to say that you seemed rather to wish once to draw me out of my shell into a very different kind of life," said Claude slowly, hesitatingly, and slightly reddening.
"I acted quite against my artistic instinct when I did that."
"Why?"
Mrs. Shiffney looked at him in silence for a moment. She was wishing to blush. But that was an effort beyond her powers.
Very far away behind them a clarion sounded.
"The soldiers must be going back to barracks, I suppose," she said.
Claude was feeling treacherous, absurdly. The thought of Charmian had come to him, and with it the disagreeable, almost hateful sensation.