"What? By Jove, that's rich!"
Her luminous eyes fell full into his, then dropped. "If ... if you can't see——"
"See what? I see you threw me overboard for him. I see you've been flirting a mile a minute with the beggar and playing fast and loose with me. I'm hanged if I stand it."
"Oh, Dobyans! Don't you see? I ... I ... You made me."
"Made you?"
She was standing in profile toward him. He could see the quiver of her lip and the shadows beneath her eyes. Already he felt the lift of the big wave that was to float him to success.
"I ... have no mother."
"Don't take the point."
She spoke as a troubled child, as if to the breezes of the night. "I have to be careful. You know how people talk. Could I let them say that I ... ran after you?" The last words were almost in a whisper.
"Do you mean...?"