Petrana softens, the shape of the expression agreement with Marcus before she even speaks, and they can both feel the slight shift of the mattress where she had been about to rise and then doesn't, immediately,

“It was exceptionally well done, Julius, I won't have you say otherwise. It is vexatious that you should be obliged to act, not that you act when you must. You would not be yourself if you did not, and I love you. For the fact that you will and do, as much as any other thing about you. If you were not handsome, you would still be clever and brave,”

a pause follows, and it is a determined effort to lighten what she thinks might otherwise embarrass him: “which is not to say that I don't appreciate, very much, that you are handsome. You both.”