“Are you?”
“I ought to be anyway,” he said.
It was unfortunate; an utterly inexcusable laughter seemed to bewitch them, hovering always close to his lips and hers.
“How can you laugh!” she said. “How dare you! I don't care for you nearly as violently as I did, Mr. Siward. A friendship between us would not be at all good for me. Things pass too swiftly—too intimately. There is too much mockery in you—” She ceased suddenly, watching the sombre alteration of his face; and, “Have I hurt you?” she asked penitently.
“No.”
“Have I, Mr. Siward? I did not mean it.” The attitude, the words, slackening to a trailing sweetness, and then the moment's silence, stirred him.
“I'm rather ignorant myself of violent emotion,” he said. “I suspect normal people are. You know better than I do whether love is usually a sedative.”
“Am I normal—after what I have confessed?” she asked. “Can't love be well-bred?”
“Perfectly I should say—only perhaps you are not an expert—”
“In what?”