The House of Mirth (Romance Classic). Edith Wharton

of our party; the motor was going the other way.”

      “I know—I know–” She paused, and he saw her redden through the twilight. “But I told them I was not well—that I should not go out. Let us go down!” she murmured.

      Selden continued to look at her; then he drew his cigarette-case from his pocket and slowly lit a cigarette. It seemed to him necessary, at that moment, to proclaim, by some habitual gesture of this sort, his recovered hold on the actual: he had an almost puerile wish to let his companion see that, their flight over, he had landed on his feet.

      She waited while the spark flickered under his curved palm; then he held out the cigarettes to her.

      She took one with an unsteady hand, and putting it to her lips, leaned forward to draw her light from his. In the indistinctness the little red gleam lit up the lower part of her face, and he saw her mouth tremble into a smile.

      “Were you serious?” she asked, with an odd thrill of gaiety which she might have caught up, in haste, from a heap of stock inflections, without having time to select the just note. Selden’s voice was under better control. “Why not?” he returned. “You see I took no risks in being so.” And as she continued to stand before him, a little pale under the retort, he added quickly: “Let us go down.”