"Don't pretend to be shocked. Women always do make love to you, don't they?"
"You didn't," smilingly he reminded her, "at Taormina. Hence my blighted life."
"No. I preferred to have you make love to me. You did it so expertly."
"And wholly unsuccessfully."
"What did you expect? A correct young married woman going on to meet her husband by the boat! Would you have been so vehement if you had known me to be an unmarried girl?"
"I haven't made it a practice to make love to unmarried girls."
"Why select Pat, then?" She paused, giving him time to speculate upon what Pat might or might not have unintentionally revealed to this shrewd observer. "I was twenty-eight then," she pursued, "and I found you a dangerous wooer, even though I knew it was not pour le bon motif. Pat isn't nineteen yet."
"Mademoiselle has taken the ordering of this matter into her own hands?" he queried mildly.
"Dieu m'en garde!" she laughed. "It is as an old friend of yours that I speak."
"Then I am prepared for the worst," he sighed. "Strike!"