“Good heavens, Palla––” he began nervously; but 95 caught the glimmer in her lowered eyes––saw her child’s mouth tremulous with mirth controlled.
“Oh, Jim!” she said, still laughing, “do you think I care how we met? How absurd of you to let me torment you. You’re altogether too boyish, too self-conscious. You’re loaded down with all the silly traditions which I’ve thrown away. I don’t care how we met. I’m glad we know each other.”
She opened a silver box on a little table at her elbow, chose a cigarette, lighted it, and offered it to him.
“I rather like the taste of them now,” she remarked, making room for him on the sofa beside her.
When he was seated, she reached up to a jar of flowers on the piano, selected a white carnation, broke it short, and then drew the stem through his lapel, patting the blossom daintily into a pom-pon.
“Now,” she said gaily, “if you’ll let me, I’ll straighten your tie. Shall I?”
He turned toward her; she accomplished that deftly, then glanced across at the clock.
“We’ve only half an hour longer to ourselves,” she exclaimed, with that unconscious candour which always thrilled him. Then, turning to him, she said laughingly: “Does it really matter how two people meet when time races with us like that?”
“And do you realise,” he said in a low, tense voice, “that since I met you every racing minute has been sweeping me headlong toward you?”
She was so totally unprepared for the deeper emotion in his voice and bearing––so utterly surprised––that she merely gazed at him.