Page:Glimpses of the Moon (Wharton 1922).djvu/231

Rh not surrendering a tittle of herself. All the difference was there.

"How I do bore you!" Susy heard Strefford exclaim. She became aware that she had not been listening: stray echoes of names of places and people—Violet Melrose, Ursula, Prince Altineri, others of their group and persuasion—had vainly knocked at her barricaded brain; what had he been telling her about them? She turned to him and their eyes met; his were full of a melancholy irony.

"Susy, old girl, what's wrong?"

She pulled herself together. "I was thinking, Streff, just now—when I said I hated the very sound of pearls and chinchilla—how impossible it was that you should believe me; in fact, what a blunder I'd made in saying it."

He smiled. "Because it was what so many other women might be likely to say so awfully unoriginal, in fact?"

She laughed for sheer joy at his insight. "It's going to be easier than I imagined," she thought. Aloud she rejoined: "Oh, Streff—how you're always going to find me out! Where on earth shall I ever hide from you?"

"Where?" He echoed her laugh, laying his hand lightly on hers. "In my heart, I'm afraid."

In spite of the laugh his accent shook her: something about it took all the mockery from his retort, checked on her lips the: "What? A valentine!" and made her suddenly feel that, if he were