'You brute!' she cried. 'I'll never speak to you again.'
'Why do you make such rash statements? You know you couldn't hold you tongue for two minutes together.'
'What a libel! I never can get a word in edgeways when I'm with you,' she returned. 'You're such a chatterbox.'
'I don't know why you put on that aggrieved air. You seem to forget that it's I who ought to be furious.'
'On the contrary, you behaved very unkindly to me a month ago, and I'm only here to-day because I have a Christian disposition.'
'You forget that for the last four weeks I've been laboriously piecing together the fragments of a broken heart,' he answered.
'It was entirely your fault,' she laughed. 'If you hadn't been so certain I was going to accept you, I should never have refused. I couldn't resist the temptation of saying no, just to see how you took it.'
'I flatter myself I took it very well.'
'You didn't,' she answered. 'You showed an entire lack of humour. You might have known that a nice woman doesn't accept a man the first time he asks her. It was very silly of you to go to Homburg as if you didn't care. How was I to know that you meant to wait a month before asking me again?'
He looked at her for a moment calmly.