Yes--that was what her mouth meant; it was treacherous; it betrayed the promise of her body and her eyes. And Furnival was feeding his infatuation on the meanings of her eyes and of her body--meanings that were unmistakable to Straker.
As if she had known what the older man was thinking of her, Philippa rose abruptly and turned her back on Furnival and began to make violent love to old Lady Paignton. Her eyes challenged Straker's across the terrace. They said: "Look at me. I will be as beautiful for this old lady as for any male thing on earth. More beautiful. Have I ever set my cap so becomingly at any of you as I am setting it now at her? Have you ever seen finer eyes than these that I make at her, that I lavish on her out of the sheer exuberance of my nature? Very well, then; doesn't that prove that you're wrong in all things you've been thinking about me. _I_ know what you've been thinking!"
As if she knew what he was thinking she made herself beautiful for him. She allowed him presently to take her for a walk, for quite a long walk. The woods of Amberley lured them, westward, across the shining fields. They went, therefore, through the woods and back by the village in the cool of the evening.
He had seldom, he might say he had never, seen Philippa in so agreeable a mood. She had sunk her sex. She was tired of her terrible game, the game that Straker saw through; she was playing another one, a secret, innocent, delightful game. She laid herself out to amuse Straker, instead of laying _him_ out (as he put it), on the table, to amuse herself.
"Philippa," he said, "you've been adorable for the last half hour."
"For the last half hour I've been myself."
She smiled as if to herself, a secret, meditative smile. The mystery of it was not lost on Straker.
"I can always be myself," she said, "when I'm with you."
She went on. "You're not tiresome, like the others. I don't know what there is about you, but you don't bore me."
She tilted her head back and gazed at him with eyes narrowed and slanting under their deep lids.
She laughed aloud her joyous appreciation of him.
Straker was neither uplifted nor alarmed. He knew exactly where he stood with her. She was not considering him; she was not trying to get at him; she was aware of his illumination and his disenchantment; she was also aware of his continuous interest in her, and it was his continuous interest, the study that he made of her, that interested Philippa. She was anxious that he should get her right, that he should accept her rendering of herself. She knew at each moment what he was thinking of her, and the thing that went on between them was not a game--it was a duel, an amicable duel, between her lucidity and his. Philippa respected his lucidity.