"Wait," said he.
She gave him a quick glance, puzzled, apprehensive, a little angry. "You're going to scold me. It was all your fault."
"Absolutely. If there is anyone to be scolded it's I."
"It wasn't," she declared with one of her vehement and point-blank reversals. "I did it." Her face took on its most impish expression. "Bad bunny! I don't care."
"I care," he said evenly. "More than I could have believed it possible to care. I love you, Pat."
"Oh, no!" she protested. "I didn't want you to say that."
"What did you expect?" he demanded, taken aback. "Did you want this to be just a cheap and easy little flirtation—a flutter, as you call it?"
"No-o. I didn't want it to be that. I wanted you to—to like me. But why did you have to say that?"
"As a justification. No, not quite that; nothing can justify me. But as an excuse, not for myself, but for you."
"For me? I don't understand."