“Certainly not. Why should I?”
I pressed her fingers softly. She turned on me all at once a face so white and tense that it showed fully the feeling that now gripped her. It was almost as if she were breaking under an intense nervous strain which she was attempting to conceal.
“I thought you might,” I replied daringly. “There is some one, you know.” I was surprising myself.
“Is there?” Her voice sounded weak. She did not attempt to look at me now, and I was wondering how far I would go.
“You couldn’t guess, of course?”
“No. Why should I?”
“Look at me,” I said quietly.
“All right,” she said with a little indifferent shrug. “I’ll look at you. There now; what of it?”
Again that intense, nervous, strained look. Her lips were parted in a shy frightened smile, showing her pretty teeth. Her eyes were touched with points of light where the moonlight, falling over my shoulder, shone upon them. It gave her whole face an eerie, almost spectral paleness, something mystical and insubstantial, which spoke of the brevity and non-endurance of all these things. She was far more wonderful here than ever she could have been in clear daylight.
“You have beautiful eyes,” I remarked.