"You mean that," he said sharply, "to stand for everything that's rather contemptible. I know! You think I'm utterly mercenary----"
"Well! You practically told me that you were that!"
"And you believe some of the things I tell you, and not others. You pick out as gospel the ones that are least to my credit," the Honourable Jim accused me. "How like your sex!"
How is it that these four words never fail to annoy our sex?
I said coldly: "I don't see any sense or use in our standing here quarrelling like this, all about nothing, on such a lovely afternoon, and all. Hadn't you better find your hostess?"
"Perhaps I had," said Mr. Burke, without moving.
I said: "I will come a little of the way with you."
"And what about the rugs and things here?"
In silence we moved off over the turf. And, ridiculous as it was, each of us kept up that resentful silence until, far off on the green downs, we saw moving towards us three specks of colour: a light grey speck between a pink and a blue speck.
"There they are," I told him. "Miss Vassity and my mistress and her cousin."
"Give me your moral support, then; don't run away till I've said good afternoon to them," Mr. Burke said, as if in an agony of shyness. And then the blue imps came back to sweep the resentment out of his eyes. He looked down at me and said: "Child! Think me all that's bad, if you want to. Enlarge upon the affecting 'pity' of it that I didn't stay out day-labouring in Canada, instead of wangling my keep out of fools at home, to whom I'm well worth all the cash I cost 'em! Go on despising me. But listen. Give me credit for one really high-principled action, Miss Lovelace!"
"What is it?" I demanded rather scornfully. "When have you shown me any kind of high principledness?"
"This afternoon," he retorted. "Just now. Just when I came upon the Sleeping Beauty on the cliffs!"
"I mean that it's not every man who would have woke her up with just a snatch of song. And I that am so--so hard up for a pair of decent new gloves!" he concluded, laughing.
And then he caught my eyes with his own, his insolent, devil-may-care blue ones. He looked down, straight down into them for a long moment.
I felt myself crimsoning under his regard. I felt--yes, I don't know how it happened, but I did feel exactly as if he had done what he had, after all, had the decency to leave undone.