"'Be careful,' he said.... 'People are watching us'"
"Be careful," he said, spinning the 13 ball into a pocket. "People are watching us. Toss that cue-ball back to me, please. Laugh a little when you do it."
For a second she balanced the white ivory ball in a hand which matched it; then the mad impulse to dash it into his smiling face passed with a shudder, and she laughed and sent it caroming swiftly from cushion to cushion, until it darted into his hand.
"Jim," she said, "you are not really serious. I know it, too; and because I do know it, I have been able to endure the things you have done—your idle fancies for a pretty face and figure—your indiscretions, ephemeral courtships, passing inclinations. But this is different——"
"Yes, it is different," he said. "And so am I, Elena. Let us be about the honest business of life, in God's name, and clear our hearts and souls of the morbid and unwholesome mess that lately entangled us."
"Is that how you speak of what we have been to each other?" she asked, very pale.
He was silent.
"Jim, dear," she said timidly, "won't you give me ten minutes alone with you?"
He scarcely heard her. He spun the last parti-coloured ball into a corner pocket, straightened his shoulders, and looked at Jacqueline where she sat in the corner of the fireplace. Herrendene, cross-legged on the rug at her feet, was doing Malay card tricks to amuse her; but from moment to moment her blue eyes stole across the room toward Desboro and Mrs. Clydesdale where they leaned together over the distant pool table. Suddenly she caught his eye and smiled a pale response to the message in his gaze.
After a moment he said quietly to Elena: "I am deeply and reverently in love—for the first and only time in my life. It is proper that you should know it. And now you do know it. There is absolutely nothing further to be said between us."