He stared at her for a little,
perceiving slowly that a new personage was being revealed
to him. The mask of delicately-balanced cynicism,
of amiably polite indifference, had been lifted;
there was a woman of flesh and blood beneath it,
after all--a woman to whom he could talk on terms of intimacy.
"Rubbish!" he said, and his big face lightened into a genial,
paternal smile. "You didn't marry me for my money at all!
What nonsense! I simply came along and carried you off.
You couldn't help yourself. It would have been the same
if I hadn't had sixpence."
To his sharp scrutiny there seemed to flicker in her eyes
a kind of answering gleam. Then she hastily averted
her glance, and in this action too there was a warrant
for his mounting confidence.
"The trouble has been," he declared, "that I've been too
much afraid of you. I've thought that you were made of so
much finer stuff than I am, that you mustn't be touched.
That was all a mistake. I see it right enough now.
You ARE finer than I am--God knows there's no dispute
about that--but that's no reason why I should have hung up
signs of 'Hands off!' all around you, and been frightened
by them myself. I had the cheek to capture you and carry
you off--and I ought to have had the pluck to make you
love me afterward, and keep it up.
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