"If I had got hold of that man this morning I think I would have killed him."
Since leaving Havre we had not referred to unhappy things.
"It would have served him right," said Jaffery.
"I did strike him once."
"Oh?" said I.
"Yes." She looked out to sea. There was a pause. I longed to hear the details of the scene, which could not have lacked humorous elements. But she left them to my imagination. "After that," she continued, "he saw I was an honest woman and talked about marriage."
Jaffery's fingers fiddled with bits of grass. "What licks me, my dear," said he, "is how you came to take up with the fellow."
She shrugged her shoulders—it was the full shrug of the un-English child of nature. "I don't know," she said, with her gaze still far away. "He was so funny."
"But he was such a bounder, old lady," said Jaffery, in gentle remonstrance.
"You all said so. But I thought you didn't like him because he was different and could make me laugh. I guess I hated you all very much. You seemed to want me to behave like Euphemia, and I couldn't behave like Euphemia. I tried very hard when you used to take me out to dinner."