"It was at the Kursaal. Do
you remember?"
Ann laughed and blushed a little.
"I'm not likely to forget," she said mirthfully. "You were so frightfully
rude."
"Rude? I?" He looked honestly astonished.
"Yes. Didn't you mean to be? I was sympathising with you so nicely over
losing at the tables--and you nearly bit my head off! You looked down your
nose--it's rather a nice nose, by the way!"--impertinently--"and observed
loftily: 'Pray don't waste your sympathy'!"
Eliot laughed outright.
"Did I, really? What a boor you must have thought me!"
"Oh, I did"--fervently. "And then there was the day of the Fetes des
Narcisses, when I hit you with a rosebud by mistake. You glared at me as
if I'd committed one of the seven deadly sins."
"So you had--if occupying the thoughts of a 'confirmed misogynist' who had
forsworn women and all their ways counts as one of them!"
A silence fell between them. The lightly uttered speech suddenly recalled
the past, and each was vividly conscious of the bitter root from which it
sprang. The man's face darkened as though he would push aside the memory.
"But that's past," said Ann at last, very softly.
He turned to her curiously.
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