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Page 390
"I must go," Geoffrey said softly, "you know I must."
"I know you are willing, even desirous of going," Joanna replied coldly. "If we were threatened, I would agree you must go. As we are attacking, I can only believe you wish to go."
Geoffrey thought that over. There was a good deal of truth in it, of course. He controlled an impulse to grin and said, "When a friend cries for help, it is as necessary to reply as it is to defend oneself."
"A 'dear' friend, indeed, who until a few months ago was our avowed enemy," Joanna snapped.
"Do not be a fool," Geoffrey snapped back. "New or old, his trouble came out of defending us. That is an act of true friendship and to it we must respond."
What Geoffrey said was true, but it did nothing to improve Joanna's mood. She flopped ill-temperedly down to yank at his cross garters and shoelaces. Since her head was bent, Geoffrey permitted himself to smile. He untied the string of his chausses and Joanna tugged them down, nearly oversetting him as she pulled shoe, loosened cross garter, and chausses leg off his foot all at once without warning. Geoffrey grasped at her to steady himself, but Joanna was also off balance and tipped sideways. By a miracle of contortion, Geoffrey caught the seat of the chair and prevented himself from falling-heavily on his wife. The chair slid away; Joanna cried out with fear that he would hurt himself; they found themselves entangled on the rug before the hearth with fifteen stone of dog astride them anxiously licking first one face and then the other.
"Off!" they roared in unison. "Out!" and then subsided into laughter.
"Are you hurt, Geoffrey?" Joanna asked, not knowing whether she wished for it or feared it. Her husband had made no motion to rise, and she could not move without jostling him, being pinned half under his body.
"Only in my heart," he replied, and nibbled at her chin. "You are so beautiful, Joanna," he murmured, continuing to nibble down her throat between the words.
Joanna had been made so furious by the eagerness with

 
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