She went on smiling, and seeming to draw closer to him and throw down
defences.

"After all, Wilfrid, the task of loving your good piece of steel won't be
less thoroughly accomplished because you find it difficult. Sir, I do
not admit any protestation. Handsome faces, musical voices, sly manners,
and methods that I choose not to employ, make the business easy to men."

"Who discover that the lady is not steel," said Wilfrid. "Need she, in
any case, wear so much there?"

He pointed, flittingly as it were, with his little finger to the slope of
her neck.

She turned her wrist, touching the spot: "Here? You have seen, then,
that it is something worn?"

There followed a delicious interplay of eyes. Who would have thought
that hers could be sweet and mean so much?

"It is something worn, then? And thrown aside for me only, Charlotte?"

"For him who loves me," she said.

"For me!"

"For him who loves me," she repeated.

"Then it is for me!"