"I must be demented!" he said with a shudder.... "Silvette, I'll tell you what we'll do—we'll take a walk, you and I. There's room all around us for millions of other people. They can come if they like; if they don't, why, it's up to them!"
"No, Jack."
"Won't it do?"
"No. Why won't you be a little bit serious about a matter that, after all, concerns me very nearly."
"I am serious," he said. "It concerns me, too."
"No, it doesn't."
"Indeed, it does. Two people are not to go twosing any more; I'm one of those people. Therefore, it concerns me, doesn't it?"
She looked at him, confused, half smiling, half reluctant.
"Don't you know," she said, "that your attention to me is worrying your father and mother?"
He thought a moment, then slowly turned toward her a sober and youthful face, from which all humor had departed; and she looked back at him out of grave young eyes that met his very sweetly, but inexorably.