After an interval Peter heard his own voice out of a fog rising to the conventional utterance.
"Of course, if you have learned to love him----" "I've loved him all the time." She was so bent on making this clear to him that she was careless what went down before her.

"From the very beginning," she said, "but he had so little money, and mother ...

I promised you, I know, but it's not as if I ever said I loved you." She should have spared him that! He had not put out a hand to hold her that he should be so pierced through with needless cruelty.

But she was bent on clearing her skirts of him.
"Do you think," she expostulated to his stricken silence, "that if I'd cared in the least I'd have made it so easy for you?
Can't you see that it was all arranged, that we _jumped_ at you ?" All the time she sat opposite him, thrusting swift and hard, there was no diminution of her appealing beauty, the flaming rose of her cheeks and the soft, dark flare of her hair.

As if she felt how it belied at every turn the quality of her unyielding intention, her voice railed against him feverishly.