Page:E Nesbit - The Literary Sense.djvu/106

94 appeared silly; there was, and there could be, no emotion to justify, to transfigure it. He spoke.

"How do you do?" he said.

She drew a deep breath, and lifted her eyebrows slightly.

"Won't you sit down?" she said; "you are looking just like you used to." She had the tiniest lisp; once it had used to charm him.

"You, too, are quite your old self," he said. Then there was a pause.

"Aren't you going to say anything?" she said.

"It was you who sent for me," said he.

"Yes."

"Why did you?"

"I wanted to see you." She opened her pretty child-eyes at him, and he noted, only to bitterly resent, the appeal in them. He remembered that old appealing look too well.

"No, Madam," he said inwardly, "not again! You can't whistle the dog to heel at your will and pleasure. I was a fool once, but I'm not fool enough to play the fool with Benoliel's wife."

Aloud he said, smiling—