‘Does that yellow-haired female come into it then?’
‘Jennifer? No. Though she’s gone too ... and that makes it all far worse....’ She added quickly: ‘It’s nobody you know.’
His silence told her that he was not deceived.
‘Anyway,’ she said lightly, ‘there’s one bad thing over in my life: falling in love, I mean. I’m free of it!’
‘Oh, don’t be ridiculous, my dear child! Don’t be such a fool! Why, you haven’t mastered your infant primer yet. I know! Do you mean to tell me this unknown fellow has absorbed all your powers of loving to the end of your life? I’m sorry then: you’re less of a person than I thought you. Ah, you think I’m mocking, and you hate me. And I do mock. Yes, yes! And I’m so sorry for you I—— But of course you won’t believe that.’
He spoke with passion, slowing the car down till she scarcely crawled, then finally stopping her altogether by the edge of the road, beneath an overhanging rocky hillside. It was getting very dark: she felt rather than saw the tense expression of his eyes and mouth.
‘You won’t believe that,’ he repeated, ‘and you’re thinking at this moment that such a brute as I never before existed.’
‘No.’ She felt dazed. ‘I think you’re meaning to be kind. But you don’t understand.’
‘Aha! Of course not. How can a coarse male animal like myself understand the feelings of a refined and sensitive young lady?’
‘Oh, Julian—unfair ... unkind!’