"N-no."
"Would I turn into the first kind if I ask you again to answer my question?"
She gave him a swift, expressionless glance:
"I want to like you; I'm trying to, Mr. Quarren. Won't you let me?"
"I want to have the right to like you, too—perhaps more than you will care to have me——"
"Please don't speak that way—I don't know what you mean, anyway——"
"That is why I asked you the question—to find out whether I had a right to——"
"Right!" she repeated. "What right? What do you mean? What have you misinterpreted in me that has given you any rights as far as I am concerned? Did you misunderstand our few hours of masked acquaintance—a few moments of perfectly innocent imprudence?—my overlooking certain conventions and listening to you at the telephone this morning—my receiving you here at this silly hour? What has given you any right to say anything to me, Mr. Quarren—to hint of the possibility of anything serious—for the future—or at any time whatever?"
"I have no right," he said, wincing.
"Indeed you have not!" she rejoined warmly, flushed and affronted. "I am glad that is perfectly clear to you."