Kind Are Her Answers by Mary Renault Page A

moment to be defiant. “But she was asleep.”
    “But you happened not to mention whether you’d told her I was coming.”
    “Oh.”
    “And, incidentally”—Kit’s voice shook a little—he was out of breath—“old people, and people with weak hearts, sleep very lightly.” He paused, and added in a rush, “You’d better remember that—another time.”
    “What do you mean, I’d better remember it?”
    “What do you suppose?”
    She stared up at him; he saw her hand clenched round the gloves she was carrying. But they were both still, and during this pause the distorting lens of anger was removed for a moment from Kit’s eyes. He saw that she was shaking, and that her face had the hopeless naughtiness of a child’s who dares not stop and let the accumulated reaction burst. It was a mood he was able to interpret, since it was his own.
    He found that he was slightly sick: his head felt light, and he had the sensation, generally, of having been the scene of some explosion whose wreckage he had not had time to view. “I’m sorry,” he said.
    “So I should hope,” said Christie unfairly. But her voice sounded miserable, and without conviction.
    “I didn’t mean what I said then.”
    “I know, but you shouldn’t have said it.”
    “Come here a minute.”
    “No. I won’t, let me go. How can you be so absolutely beastly and then think you can just kiss me as if nothing had happened?”
    “Keep still. Who said I was going to kiss you as if nothing had happened?”
    In a little while there was a necessary pause, during which, at the same moment, Christie said, “But what was the matter with you?” and Kit said, “What made you do it? That’s what I can’t make out.”
    “Do what, walk in the road?”
    “Are you crazy? Walk away without speaking to me when I came.”
    “Was that what you were annoyed about?”
    “You’re incredible. You thought I’d like it?”
    “I suppose I can’t have thought.”
    “Well, then, why?”
    “Oh, it was silly. It doesn’t matter now. … I never thought of you minding like this. It was only—you’d been rather sweet before, and I was afraid of you being different in the morning. So you were.”
    In her embarrassment she was twisting a handful of his hair, which she happened to be holding, tighter and tighter; but Kit did not notice it. After a while she looked up at him, and let the piece of hair go.
    “What is it, sweet?”
    “Nothing,” said Kit abruptly, and kissed her to hide his face.
    “But, my precious, you are funny. Didn’t you think it would probably be something like that?”
    “No. I—”
    “Well, what did you think?”
    With overdone casualness, Kit remarked, “It was all a storm in a teacup. You get touchy when you’ve given yourself away.”
    She moved her face back from his. “But don’t be silly, you’re a man.”
    “What has that got to do with it?”
    “You don’t have to feel that sort of thing. That’s what I’m supposed to feel.”
    Kit, who was feeling foolish, merely kissed her.
    “I’ve been a cow,” she said suddenly, with a crack in her voice. “You always make me feel a cow. I can’t get used to you being so much nicer than any one else.”
    “Oh, for the Lord’s sake—”
    “I’ve been beastly to you. I’ve made you unhappy. I wish I were dead.”
    Her voice shook with passionate sincerity. Moved but bewildered, Kit embraced her. To be in her emotional neighbourhood gave him the sensation of wandering among a medley of shining objects in a thick fog. It excited more than it exasperated him. She clung to him, murmuring remorse and love.
    “How are we going to meet again?” he said.
    They began discussing plans. He would come to her room through the garden on his way back from his next night call, or she was to dial for him on the telephone in the hall after the house was asleep. There would be no need to say anything, he explained; she could tap on the mouthpiece and he would know who it