"Bite me! Good heavens, don't they bite you? But I don't suppose they dare——"
"I didn't mean 'dare' exactly," he tried to explain, feeling his ears turning a fiery red, and wondering why on earth he should have made such a foolish remark.
"What did you mean?"
"N—nothing. I don't know. I say things and—and sometimes," he added in a burst of confidence, "they don't seem to mean anything at all." To himself he groaned through ground teeth: "What an ass I am. What on earth is the matter with me?"
She considered him in silence, candidly; and redder and redder grew his ears as he saw that she was quietly inspecting him from head to foot with an interest perfectly unembarrassed, innocently intent upon her inspection.
Then, having finished him down to his feet, she lifted her eyes, caught his, looked a moment straight into them, then sighed a little.
"Do you know," she said, "I ought not to have come here again."
"Why?" he asked, astonished.
"There's no use in my telling you. There was no use in my coming. Oh, I realise that perfectly well now. And I think I'd better go——"
