Page:The Other House (London, William Heinemann, 1896), Volume 1.djvu/212

198 passion so acquainted with pain that even in the midst of it she could flower into charity. Sadly and gently she shook her head. "Poor Tony!" Then she added in quite a different tone: "What do you think of the difference of our ages?"

"Yours and Paul's? It isn't worth speaking of!"

"That's sweet of you—considering that he's only twenty-two. However, I'm not yet thirty," she went on; "and, of course, to gain time, one might press the thing hard." She hesitated again; after which she continued: "It's awfully vulgar, this way, to put the dots on the i's, but as it was you, and not I, who began it, I may ask if you really believe that if one should make a bit of an effort?" And she invitingly paused, to leave him to complete a question as to which it was natural she should feel a delicacy.

Tony's face, for an initiated observer, would have shown that he was by this time watching for a trap; but it would also have shown that, after a moment's further reflection, he didn't particularly care if the trap should catch him. "If you take such an interest in Paul," he replied with no visible abatement of his preference for the