“Oh, you needn’t mind my blushes, it’s too dark to see them. And when I startled you with Veynes’ proposal, and bored you to admire my figure, and my frock, and everything he might be master of, was that a concession?”
“To my stupidity?” he parried.
“No; the genius for futility—a woman’s!” she said, with drawn bitterness. “All the same, if you guessed?”
“Oh, guessing!” he shrugged.
“No! You’re no such fool. Are you?”
She leaned somewhat away from him with a suggestion of disdain.
“No,” he replied, slowly, rising, “I did not guess; I knew.”
She heard him pacing in the dusky room behind her, and stop at last before the fireplace. He laid one hand over the other and pressed them with his forehead against the mantelpiece.
Cries, shrill and hoarse, drifted in with the darkness from the Palace Road; the evening’s pennyworth of print in shouted headlines, the details draining incoherently into the night.
“Won’t you say you’re sorry?” she inquired, presently.