When it was over, he washed up, she drying the cups and saucers, and
striving with somewhat doubtful success to appear normal and
unconstrained.
"Do you mind if I smoke?" he asked, at the end of this.
"Of course not," she answered, and he brought out the briar pipe
forthwith.
She watched him fill and light it, her chin upon her hand. She was still
very pale, and the fear had not gone wholly from her eyes.
"Now I'm going to talk to you," Rivington announced.
"Yes?" she said rather faintly.
He lay back with his arms under his head, and stared up through the
beech boughs to the cloudless evening sky.
"I want you first of all to remember," he said, "that what I said a
little while ago I meant--and shall mean for all time. I will never do
anything, Chirpy, against your will."
He spoke deliberately. He was puffing the smoke upward in long spirals.
"That is quite understood, is it?" he asked, as she did not speak.
"I think so," said Ernestine slowly.
"I want you to be quite sure," he said. "Otherwise, what I am going to
say may startle you."
"Don't frighten me!" she begged, in a whisper.
"My dear child, I sha'n't frighten you," he rejoined. "You may frighten
yourself. That is what I am trying to guard against."
Her laugh had a piteous quiver in it.
"You think me very young and foolish, don't you?" she said.
He sat up and looked at her.
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