“Should we have been as happy if you had quite loved me then?”
“We were different then.”
“Yes, how different!” said Marian; “I at any rate. I daresay you haven’t changed much. You were grown-up then, but I was merely a child. I don’t know that I am very much more now, am I?”
She laughed lightly as she spoke, and glanced at him; then laughed again as she leaned back in her chair and nibbled a marron glacé.
“A child!” she went on. “Am I anything more than a mere grown-up child? I don’t think I can be much more. I don’t want to really grow up. Just a Cinderella, whom you found sitting among the ashes. I’d never met a prince before, so—I let you carry me off in your fairy hansom. So—they lived happily ever afterward. I wonder, did they?”
She leaned forward, her elbows on the table and her chin resting on her folded hands.
“What a way to talk on our first night here! What nonsense!”
“It’s nice to talk nonsense sometimes.”
“Yes, but only jolly nonsense. I’ll tell you something that will make you laugh. Do you know—I felt quite—nervous coming here to-night.”
“Quite right. Any man going to dine with a lovely lady should feel nervous.”