She laughed aloud, glad that he cared enough for her to be so angry at her. She forgot the decencies of telephone etiquette enough to sing out:
“Do you really love me so madly?”
He loathed sentimentalities over the telephone, and she knew it, and was always indulging in them. But the fat was on the wire now, and he came back at her with a still icier tone:
“There’s only one good excuse for what you’ve done. Are you telephoning from a hospital?”
“No, from Polly’s.”
“Then I can’t imagine any excuse.”
“But you’re a business man, not an imaginator,” she railed. “You evidently don’t know me. I’m ‘Belle Boyd, the Rebel Spy,’ and also ‘Joan of Arkansas,’ and a few other patriots. I’ve got news for you that will melt the icicles off your eyebrows.”
“News?” he answered, with no curiosity modifying his anger.
“War news. May I come down and tell you about it?”