"Donovan! Oh, Lord, Peter, how dull you are! Donovan has hardly a thought in his head about anything except Donovan. He was born a jolly good sort, and he's sampled pretty well everything. He's cool as a cucumber, though he has his passions like everyone else. If you keep your head, you can say or do anything with Donovan. But Langton is deliberate. He knows about things, and he refuses and chooses. I didn't want …" She broke off. "Peter," she said savagely, "in two minutes that man would know more about me than you do, if I let him."
He had never seen her so. The childish brown eyes had a look in them that reminded him of an animal caught in a trap. He sprang up and dropped on his knees by her side, catching her hand.
"Oh, Julie, don't," he said. "What do you mean? What is there about you that I don't know? How are you different from either of them?"
She threw her cigarette away, and ran her fingers through his hair, then made a gesture, almost as if pushing something away, Peter thought, and laughed her old ringing trill of laughter.
"Lor', Peter, was I tragic? I didn't mean to be, my dear. There's a lot about me that you don't know, but something that you've guessed. I can't abide shams and conventions really. Let's have life, I say, whatever it is. Heavens! I've seen street girls with more in them than I pretended to your friend to have in me to-night. They at least deal with human nature in the raw. But that's why I love you; there's no need to pretend to you, partly because, at bottom, you like real things as much as I, and partly because—oh, never mind."
"Julie, I do mind—tell me," he insisted.
Her face changed again. "Not now, Peter," she said. "Perhaps one day—who can say? Meantime, go on liking me, will you?"
"Like you!" he exclaimed, springing up, "Why, I adore you! I love you!
Oh, Julie, I love you! Kiss me, darling, now, quick!"
She pushed him off. "Not now," she cried; "I've got to have my revenge. I know why you wouldn't come home in the cab! Come! we'll clink glasses, but that's all there is to be done to-night!" She sprang up, flushed and glowing, and held out an empty glass.
Peter filled hers and his, and they stood opposite to each other. She looked across the wine at him, and it seemed to him that he read a longing and a passion in her eyes, deep down below the merriness that was there now. "Cheerio, old boy," she said, raising hers. "And 'here's to the day when your big boots and my little shoes lie outside the same closed door!'"