"So changed," she insisted.
"No, not changed," he replied equivocally.
"So distant."
"Wish I was—a hundred miles distant," he groaned to himself. "Can't help it," he declared, goaded by the consciousness of those four eyes magnetizing him from the darkness. "Perhaps I've been too familiar." "Oh, no," she protested, growing desperate in turn, as the prize of a millionaire husband seemed slipping from her. "If I don't mind it Percy, dear——"
She put out her arms, but he fell back. "Don't," he exclaimed, the hateful words almost choking him. "It isn't proper, you know."
"I'm afraid," she urged forlornly. "I have been too absurdly proper."
"Oh, no—yes, I mean, no, no." In his state of mind Peckover found it impossible to differentiate between what he longed and what he was forced to say.
"You said to-day it was dry work," Ethel observed caressingly. "You may have a sip if you like."
The invitation, reminding him, with a difference, of his Crystal Palace and Welsh Harp days, was well nigh too much for the well-versed philander of the suburbs. "Oh, don't, don't!" he almost shrieked. "Please go away. You will drive me mad. This is awful," he groaned.
"Of course, if you'd rather not——" Ethel suggested with a toss of the head.