herself versus the world, to discount the support she had received from certain factors in her life. She had had, and always would have in her own country, the loyalty of her class whether she wanted it or not, and the power of money to shut mouths. She had never had the poverty that forces one to hunt for bread against prejudice. She had had added to the force of her own personality the glamour of her set, despise it as she might.
And Dane saw this very clearly, and was annoyed that a girl of her perceptions did not see it as he did. He was angry now that they had had to have all this talk when he had wanted merely to feel. And then he was chagrined that she could stand like that against him.
He made no response at first when she put her arm round him. She had to withdraw it when the shower descended upon them.
“You’d better go into the cabin,” he said.
“I don’t want to. I won’t get wet.”
In spite of the cloud between them they rather enjoyed the speeding of the launch through the rain. Dane drove recklessly, but the river was wide here and he knew it well. For a time the stars and the moon were blotted out and the Wairoa was a stretch of blackness in a world only a shade less dark. He began to feel less irritable. After all, he did not believe she would resist him much longer.
She sat trying to think over all he had said, and over some of the things that had not yet been said at all. She began to see that she had been thinking far more of her wishes and her convictions than of his. Indeed, she saw with a pang of self-accusation that she had been thinking mostly of herself.
The shower passed, and the moon and stars came out the clearer for the freshening of the atmosphere. Valerie shook the rug and assured Dane that she was not wet.
