"Under the circumstances," she said, coldly, "do you think it decent to continue this conversation?"
"Yes, I do," he said. "I'm a decent sort of fellow, or you would have divined the contrary long ago; and there is a humiliating explanation that I owe you."
"You owe me every explanation," she said, "but I am generous enough to spare you the humiliation."
"I know what you mean," he admitted. "I hypnotized you into coming here, and you are aware of it."
Pink to the ears with resentment and confusion, she sat up very straight and stared at him. From a pretty girl defiant, she became an angry beauty. And he quailed.
"Did you imagine that you hypnotized me?" she asked, incredulously.
"What was it, then?" he muttered. "You did everything I wished for--"
"I--I thought you needed the sun, and as soon as I said that you ought to go out, you--you put on that big, black hat. And then I wished I knew you--I wished you would come here to the wistaria arbor, and--you came."
"In other words," she said, disdainfully, "you deliberately planned to control my mind and induce me to meet you in a clandestine and horrid manner."
"I never looked at it in that way. I only knew I admired you a lot, and--and you were tremendously charming--more so than my sketch--"
"I--you see, I made a little sketch," he admitted--"a little picture of you--"
"Of course you will send that portrait to me at once!" she said.
"Oh yes, of course I will; I had meant to send it anyway--"
"That," she observed, "would have been the very height of impertinence."
Opening her book again, she indulged him with a view of the most exquisite profile he had ever dreamed of.
She despised him; there seemed to be no doubt about that. He despised himself; his offence, stripped by her of all extenuation, appeared to him in its own naked hideousness; and it appalled him.
"As a matter of fact," he said, "there's nothing criminal in me. I never imagined that a man could appear to such disadvantage as I appear. I'll go. There's no use in hoping for pardon. I'll go."
Studying her book, she said, without raising her eyes, "I am offended--deeply hurt--but--"
"But I am sorry to say that I am not as deeply offended as I ought to be."
"That is very, very kind of you," he said, warmly.