Clementina puckered up her face.
“What’s that? Here am I, who have been abusing you all your life, now doing violence to my traditions and saying let us kiss and be friends—just at the very moment when you want friends more than you ever did in your born days—and you ask me if I’m sincere! Lord in heaven! Did you ever know me to be even decently polite to creatures I didn’t care about?”
Clementina was indignant. The faint shadow of a smile passed across Quixtus’s face.
“You’ve not always been polite to me, Clementina. This change to solicitude is surprising. Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes. Which means——”
“Do you suppose you’re the only person who knows tags out of the Latin grammar?” she snapped. Then she laughed in her dry way. “Don’t let us begin to quarrel. We’ve got a child, you and I. I hope you realise that. If we were its real father and mother we might quarrel with impunity. As we’re not, we can’t. What are we going to do?”
Quixtus thought deeply for a long time. His sensitive nature shrank from the duty imposed. If he accepted it he would be the dead man’s dupe to the end of the chapter.
“You have seen the little girl?” he inquired at last.
“Yes. Been with her most of the day.”
“Do you like her?”
She regarded him with whimsical pity.