her habit of mind with men her fierce individualism was being insidiously undermined. She was following him.
His mood changing he sang the refrain of a popular French song:
Que vos grands yeux pleins de douceur
Ont charmé tout mon coeur,
Et que c’est pour la vie.
Je sais que c’est une folie,
Que loin de vous je devrais
M’en aller à jamais.
Je sais, je sais que vous êtes jolie.
She loved the gay little air which she had never heard, but because she had sadly neglected the French she had learned from her governess she could not make out all the sense of it.
“What’s that about folly and running away?” she demanded, raising her face.
But he calmly put a hand over her mouth and pushed her head down, and then to puzzle her sang the song through, knowing that it would tease her.
When he had finished she tried to wriggle up. But his arms tightened about her.
“Tell me what it said,” she demanded again.
He leaned down and began to move his lips about in her hair.
“I will not be suppressed,” she said, trying to resist him.
“All right, Miss Freedom,” he said softly, suddenly releasing his hold upon her, so that she slipped back and hit her head against the handle of the rudder.
The solicitude Dane showed over that mishap was out of all proportion to its size, but her appetite for solicitude
