She lifted her eyebrows: "You are entirely too confident. Must I first ask your permission to fulfill my obligations and then accomplish them in a manner that suits your views? It sounds a little like dictation, Kervyn."
He walked beside her, cogitating in gloom and silence. Was this the girl he had known? Was this the same ungrateful and capricious creature upon whom he had bestowed his protection, his personal interest, his anxious thoughts?
That he had fallen in love with her had surprised him, but it did not apparently surprise her. Had she instinctively foreseen what was going to happen to him? Had she deliberately watched the process with wise and feminine curiosity, coolly keeping her own skirts clear?
And the more he cogitated, the deeper and more complex appeared to him her intuitive and merciless knowledge of man.
Never had he beheld such lightning change in a woman. It couldn't be a change; all this calm self-possession, all the cool badinage, all this gaiety, this laughing malice, this serene capacity for appraising man and his motives must have existed in her—hidden, not latent; concealed, not embryotic!
He was illogical and perfectly masculine.
She was only a young girl, awakened, and making her first campaign.