"Yes, you did, Paddy, dear! You asked me to run away with you, and what's that but telling everybody?"
He felt angry with her for what seemed to him to be flippancy. "I'm in earnest, Cecily!" he said. "I'm not joking!"
"I'm in earnest, too. I don't want to run away with you ... not because I don't love you ... I do love you, Paddy, very much ... but it's so absurd to run away and make a ... a mountain out of a molehill. We should be awfully miserable if we were to elope. We'd have to go to some horrid place where we shouldn't know anybody and there'd be nothing to do. Really, it's much pleasanter to go on as we are now, Paddy. You can come here and take me to lunch sometimes and go to the theatre with me when Jimphy wants to go to a music-hall, and ... and so on!"
He could not rid himself of the notion that she was "chattering" in the Lensley style.
"It would be decenter to go away together," he said.
She moved away from him angrily. "You're a prig, Paddy!" she exclaimed. "You can go to Ireland. I don't care!"
He got up as if to go, but did not move away. He stood beside her irresolutely, wishing to go and wishing to stay, and then he bent over her and touched her. "Cecily," he said, "come with me!"
"No!" she answered, keeping her back to him.
"Very well," he said, and he walked across the room towards the door. His hand was on the handle when she called to him.
"Aren't you going to stay to lunch?" she said.