"That would be a pleasant complication," he observed grimly.
"There will be more and more complications all the time," she fretted. "If you only weren't married!"
"But I thought——" he began eagerly.
"Then there wouldn't be any kick. We could be supposed to be engaged. I suppose we would be engaged!" she added brightly, as if a new thought had struck her.
"Being engaged implies being married eventually," he pointed out.
"Not these days," she retorted. "It doesn't hold you up for anything and we could snap out of it when we got good and ready. Only—this isn't the kind of thing you can snap out of, is it?" A cloud darkened the vivacity of her face. "We're terrible boobs, Cary.... Let's stop it."
"That's wholly in your hands, dear love."
"Yes," she said discontentedly; "you've always put everything up to me; let me go my own way—that's why I've gone so far. I wonder if you knew that was the way to get me. You're so dam' clever.... Like what's-his-name—Mephistoph—no, Macchiavelli, wasn't it?" She dropped to the floor in front of him, clasped her hands over his knee, turned upward a shadowy and bewitching face, speaking in a lowered voice. "Listen, dear. Next week I'm going back to Philadelphia, to finish out my visit with Cissie. But—I won't go to Cissie's, not till the next day. We'll have that time together; that'll be our good-bye. And then you must go away."
"If you wish it so," he assented steadily.
"I don't wish it so. But it's got to come some time. You say so yourself."