Page:The Other House (London, William Heinemann, 1896), Volume 1.djvu/67

Rh than they uttered. "What I was going to say," she then quietly resumed, "is that I'm awfully pleased with myself when I see that at any rate you're—what shall I call you?—a made man."

Dennis frowned a little through his happiness. "With 'yourself'? Aren't you a little pleased with me?"

She hesitated. "With myself first, because I was sure of you first."

"Do you mean before I was of you?—I'm somehow not sure of you yet!" the young man declared.

Rose coloured slightly; but she gaily laughed. "Then I'm ahead of you in everything!"

Leaning toward her with all his intensified need of her and holding by his extended arm the top of the sofa-back, he worried with his other hand a piece of her dress, which he had begun to finger for want of something more responsive. "You're as far beyond me still as all the distance I've come." He had dropped his eyes upon the crumple he made in her frock, and her own during that moment, from her superior height, descended upon him with a kind of unseen appeal. When he