"Oh, Scott, don't make me——"
"Yes, I will. I thought you and I were going to be in thorough accord and sympathy and everything else."
"Yes, but you mustn't bully me."
"I'm not. I merely want you to get over your absurd fear of live things, so that you and I can really enjoy ourselves. You said you would, Kathleen."
"Can't we be in perfect sympathy and roam about and—and everything, unless I touch such things?"
He said reproachfully, balancing the little creature on his palm: "The fun is in being perfectly confident and fearless. You have no idea how I like all these things. You said you were going to like 'em, too."
"I do—rather."
"Then take this one and pet it."
She glanced at the boy beside her, realising how completely their former relations were changing.
Long ago she had given all her heart to the Seagrave children—all the unspent passion in her had become an unswerving devotion to them. And now, a woman still young, the devotion remained, but time was modifying it in a manner sometimes disquieting. She tried not to remember that now, in Scott, she had a man to deal with, and tried in vain; and dealt with him weakly, and he was beginning to do with her as he pleased.