"And what is that?" he asked, like a man, rashly.
"To marry some one who doesn't matter, and be in love with some one else," she replied carelessly, and kept her face averted.
He rolled up his cigarette and lighted it, and wondered whether women ever discussed among themselves these subjects which they had no diffidence in approaching with men.
"No, it would hardly work, I am afraid," he said slowly. "Lady Joan, it is an absurdly old-fashioned thing to say, but do you know I fancy, after all, that marriage is the only way out of it?"
She turned round and faced him with hot cheeks and angry eyes.
"I think you are merely abusing your privilege as my friend," she cried; "I am not going to stay here for you to draw me out and then--then laugh at me. It is time we closed this--this absurd interview, and I wish--I wish I had known you were here before I started for my walk. Do you suppose that _I_ would say anything to _you_ that the whole world might not hear?"
He certainly did suppose so from quite recent experience, but he only apologized humbly for having his meaning mistaken, and allowed her to retrace her steps across the field without uttering any commonplace about meeting again as friends. Perhaps he knew quite well that when they did meet again she would be by far the most self-possessed of the two.
The musician walked back to the inn and tried to persuade himself that he was a disappointed man.
"My engagements never do seem to go right," he thought dejectedly, as he leaned out of the parlor window and looked vaguely among the fruit-trees. The door was pushed open from without, and a rush of red sunshine and childish footsteps came into the room.
"Here I are, daddy! Where is you, daddy? I've been a naughty boy, _welly_ naughty Nanny says, 'cos I didn't say grace at tea-time. Why don't _you_ never say grace, my daddy? When I are a big man I aren't never going to say grace no more! Nanny says I are to kiss you free times, and did you bring any sweets for me, daddy?"
"That will do, my son, yes," said Digby, nervously, as the boy clambered on his knee and proceeded to cover him with sticky embraces; "Nanny is always right, of course, but I think twice will be enough. Thanks. The sweets are in this pocket, so you need not turn out all the others. And you must not have any unless you stop jumping."