“I don’t desire to hear yet—I don’t know where my own heart—or even my mind is—or what I think about—anything. Please be reasonable.” She stole a look at him to see how he was taking it, and there was concern enough in her glance to give him a certain amount of hope had he noticed it.
“You like me, Thessa, don’t you?” he urged.
“Have I not admitted it? Do you know that you are becoming a serious responsibility to me? You worry me, too! You are like a boy with all your emotions reflected on your features and every thought perfectly unconcealed and every impulse followed by unconsidered behaviour.
“Be reasonable. I have asked it a hundred times of you in vain. I shall ask it, probably, innumerable times before you comply with my request. Don’t show so plainly that you imagine yourself in love. It embarrasses me, it annoys Garry, and I don’t know what his family will think——”
“But if I am in love, why not——”
“Does one advertise all one’s most intimate and secret and—and sacred emotions?” she interrupted in sudden and breathless annoyance. “It is not the way that successful courtship is conducted, I warn you! It is not delicate, it is not considerate, it is not sensible.... And I do want you to—to be always—sensible and considerate. I want to like you.”
He looked at her in a sort of dazed way:
“I’ll try to please you,” he said. “But it seems to confuse me—being so suddenly bowled over—a thing like that rather knocks a man out—so unexpected, you know!—and there isn’t much use pretending,” he went on excitedly. “I can’t see anybody else in the world except you! I can’t think of anybody else! I’m madly in love—blindly, desperately——”
“Oh, please, please!” she remonstrated. “I’m not a girl to be taken by storm! I’ve seen too much—lived too much! I’m not a Tzigane to be galloped alongside of and swung to a man’s saddle-bow! Also, I shall tell you one thing more. Happiness and laughter 304 are necessities to me! And they seem to be becoming extinct in you.”