Dinah gave a sudden sharp shiver, and pulled her coat closer about her.
He glanced at her again. "You'll like it better than being a maid-of-all-work," he said, with his swift, transforming smile.
She smiled back at him with ready responsiveness. "Oh, I shall! I'm sure I shall. I've always wanted to be married--always. Only--it'll seem a little funny, just at first. You won't get impatient with me, will you, if--if sometimes I forget how to behave?"
He laughed and abruptly slackened speed. They were running down a narrow lane bordered with bare trees through which the spring sunshine filtered down. On a brown upland to one side of them a plough was being driven. On the other the ground sloped away to deep meadows where wound a willow-banked river.
The car stopped. "How pretty it is!" said Dinah.
And then very suddenly she found that it was not for the sake of the view that he had brought her to a standstill in that secluded place. For he caught her to him with the hot ardour she had learned to dread and kissed with passion the burning face she sought to hide.
She struggled for a few seconds like a captured bird, but in the end she yielded palpitating, as she had yielded so often before, mutely bearing that which her whole soul clamoured inarticulately to escape. When he let her go, her cheeks were on fire. He was laughing, but she was on the verge of tears.
He started on again without words, and in a very brief space they were racing forward at terrific speed, seeming scarcely to touch the ground so rapid was their progress.
Dinah sat with her two hands clutched upon her hat, thankful for the cold rush of air that gave her relief after the fiery intensity of those unsparing kisses. Her heart was beating in great thumps. Somehow the fierceness of him always exceeded either memory or expectation. He was so terribly strong, so disconcertingly absolute in his demands upon her. And every time he seemed to take more.
She hardly noticed anything further of the country through which they passed. Her agitation possessed her overwhelmingly. She felt exhausted, unnerved, very curiously ashamed. It was good to have so princely a lover, but his tempestuous wooing was altogether too much for her. She wondered how Rose, the sedate and composed beauty, would have met those wild gusts of passion. They would not have disconcerted her; nothing ever did. She would probably have endured all with a smile. No form of adoration could come amiss with her. She did not fancy that Rose's heart was capable of beating at more than the usual speed. Her very blushes savoured of a delicate complacency that enhanced her beauty without disturbing her serenity. A great wave of envy went through Dinah. "Ah, why had she not been blessed with such a temperament as that?"