“Do you mind?” he ventured.
“Of course you will send that portrait to me at once!” she said.
“Oh yes, of course I will; I had meant to send it anyway—”
“That,” she observed, “would have been the very height of impertinence.”
Opening her book again, she indulged him with a view of the most exquisite profile he had ever dreamed of.
She despised him; there seemed to be no doubt about that. He despised himself; his offence, stripped by her of all extenuation, appeared to him in its own naked hideousness; and it appalled him.
“As a matter of fact,” he said, “there’s nothing criminal in me. I never imagined that a man could appear to such disadvantage as I appear. I’ll go. There’s no use in hoping for pardon. I’ll go.”
Studying her book, she said, without raising her eyes, “I am offended—deeply hurt—but—”
He waited anxiously.