"But you'd like to see me 'broken', you'd feel so superior——," she taunted.
He looked at his watch and slowly pushed back his chair.
"Why you invited me I don't quite know," he mused. "Surely not to help you out with one of your little dramatic scenes?... Now, about to-morrow—will you be up to coming to this show?"
"No! And even I might think twice before going to a theatre while that girl's still unburied. That's why I'm here now, why I gave myself the pleasure of asking you to dine with me.... And you may be quite comfortable in your mind; you won't ever need to risk your reputation by being seen in my company again."
Jack could see that her nerves were sadly unstrung, but he could not understand the restless vanity which always posed her in the limelight ahead of the world in novelty and extravagance and yet so lacked confidence that she was wounded if any dared criticize.
"I accept my dismissal," he said good-humouredly. Nothing would induce him to give her the satisfaction of a parting scene. His training at home, at Eton and at New College taught him that an Englishman might legitimately display every quality but emotion. "I warned you that I was not a social success."
"Have you tried very hard? You always talk to me as if I'd no more feeling than that table."
Lady Barbara needed concentration to analyze him. She knew that a man is usually cruel only to those whom he likes or loathes; and it dawned upon her that, when an unsocial animal consented to meet her at all, he would not try to hurt her unless he cared for her.
"I'm not going to join your musical-comedy chorus of adulators, when I think you ought to be soundly whipped; I'm not even going to say, 'Oh, that's Barbara Neave's way; she's always a law unto herself.' I think that's the thinnest excuse.... Why did you insist on telling me about it at all? It's like some one boasting that he smokes a hundred cigarettes a day.... But your mother said I was to send you to bed early. Good-bye, Lady Barbara."
She walked with him into the hall and watched his elaborate and characteristic care in arranging his scarf.