“The poor man thinks I invited him here to propose to him,” she told the fire gravely, stretching out her little slippered feet toward it.
He laughed. “I'm not so presumptuous. You wouldn't aim at such small game. You would be quite capable of it if you wanted to, but you don't. But I'm devoured with curiosity to know why you asked me, though of course I shan't find out.”
Her narrowed eyes swept him with amusement. “If I knew myself! Alice says it was to make a fool of you. I don't think she is right. But if she is I'm in to score a failure. You're too coolheaded and—” She stopped, her eyes sparkling with the daring of her unvoiced suggestion.
“Say it,” he nodded.
“—and selfish to be anybody's fool. Perhaps I asked you just in the hope you might prove interesting.”
He got up and stood with his arm on the mantel. From his superior height he looked down on her dainty insolent perfection, answering not too seriously the challenge of her eyes. No matter what she meant—how much or how little she was wonderfully attractive. The provocation of the mocking little face lured mightily.
“I am going to prove interested at any rate. Let's hope it may be a preliminary to being interesting.”
“But it never does. Symptoms of too great interest bore one. I enjoy more the men who are impervious to me. Now there's my father. He comes nearer understanding me than anybody else, but he's quite adamantine to my wiles.”
“I shall order a suit of chain armor at once.”
“An unnecessary expense. Your emotions are quite under control,” she told him saucily.