"Evidently not, if mine was a sample."
"Ours now is so reasonable as to seem insecure and dangerous."
Her intimacy with Lawson, therefore, had begun on the plane of
good-fellowship while they were in Paris together, and for two years he
seemed quite satisfied. Of late he had been less contained.
After her outburst of anger at her father's ejectment of Curtis, she met
Lawson with a certain reserve not common to her. At the moment, she more
than half resolved that the time had come to leave her father's house
for Lawson's flat, and yet her will wavered. She said as little as
possible to him concerning that last disgraceful scene, as much on her
own account as to spare Curtis, but her restlessness was apparent to
Lawson and puzzled him. Two or three times during the summer he had
openly, though jocularly, alluded to their marriage, but she had put
him off with a keen word. Now that her father seemed intolerable, she
listened to him with a new interest. He became a definite possibility--a
refuge.
Encouraged by this slight change in her attitude towards him, Lawson
took a ring from his pocket one night and said, "I wish you'd wear this,
Elsie Bee Bee."