Page:Crawford - Love in idleness.djvu/166

 "For you! Oh dear, what a question!" She laughed outright.

Lawrence leaned down and knocked the ashes out of his pipe against the toe of his heavy walking-shoe without saying a word. Then he put the pipe into his pocket. She watched him.

"You've no right to be angry this time," she said. "But you are."

The young man faced her quietly and waited a moment before he spoke.

"You're playing with me," he said, calmly and without emphasis, as stating a fact.

"Of course I am!" laughed Fanny Trehearne. "What did you expect? But I'm sorry that you've found it out," she added, with appalling cynicism. "It won't be fun any more."

"Unless we both play," suggested Lawrence, who had either recovered his temper very quickly, or possessed a better control over it than Fanny had supposed.

"All right!" she exclaimed cheerfully. "Let's play—let us play. That sounds solemn, somehow—I wonder why? Oh—of course—it's like 'Let us pray' in church."