“Me, then. I have your mother’s permission.”
“You’ll find my mother is uniformly generous—with things that don’t belong to her.”
Audrey paused. “Have you ever been in love? You don’t sound as if you had. You sound like the strictly cold-science type. But you look—well, amenable.”
“I’ve been in love,” Jimmie replied steadily.
Audrey laughed with a rich laughter. “That’s something, anyway. Tell me about it!”
“Rather not.”
“Please!” She wrinkled her nose. “Pretty please!”
Jimmie sank in his chair till his chin was on his chest. He looked savagely into the girl’s eyes. “She was English. Her name was Ellen. In some ways—ever so many—she reminds me of you. Rather, you remind me of her. It was a shock when I saw you. She was bright blonde, like you, and tall and slender and she had one of those stagey voices that can make a man shake all over with a single syllable. About your age. Twenty-three?
I thought so. I was very fond of Ellen, though I never did see enough of her. Yes. I’d say I was in love. We weren’t engaged—”
“Sissy! ”