Part 10

Suddenly he leaned over and catching up her hand, kissed it.

“You're so cool and sweet,” he said. “I--I wish you liked me a little.” He smiled up at her, rather wistfully. “I never knew any one quite like you.”

She drew her hand away. Something Nina had said, that he knew his way about, came into her mind, and made her uncomfortable. Back of him, suddenly, was that strange and mysterious region where men of his sort lived their furtive man-life, where they knew their way about. She had no curiosity and no interest, but the mere fact of its existence as revealed by Nina repelled her.

“There are plenty like me,” she said. “Don't be silly, Wallie. I hate having my hand kissed.”

“I wonder,” he observed shrewdly, “whether that's really true, or whether you just hate having me do it?”

When Nina came in he was drawing a rough sketch of his new power boat, being built in Florida.

Nina's delay was explained by the appearance, a few minutes later, of a rather sullen Annie with a tea tray. Afternoon tea was not a Wheeler institution, but was notoriously a Sayre one. And Nina believed in putting one's best foot foremost, even when that resulted in a state of unstable domestic equilibrium.

“Put in a word for me, Nina,” Wallie begged. “I intend to ask Elizabeth to go to the theater this week, and I think she is going to refuse.”

“What's the play?” Nina inquired negligently. She was privately determining that her mother needed a tea cart and a new tea service. There were some in old Georgian silver--

“'The Valley.' Not that the play matters. It's Beverly Carlysle.”

“I thought she was dead, or something.”

“Or something is right. She retired years ago, at the top of her success. She was a howling beauty, I'm told. I never saw her. There was some queer story. I've forgotten it. I was a kid then. How about it, Elizabeth?”

“I'm sorry. I'm going Wednesday night.”

He looked downcast over that, and he was curious, too. But he made no comment save:

“Well, better luck next time.”

“Just imagine,” said Nina. “She's going with Dick Livingstone. Can you imagine it?”

But Wallace Sayre could and did. He had rather a stricken moment, too. Of course, there might be nothing to it; but on the other hand, there very well might. And Livingstone was the sort to attract the feminine woman; he had gravity and responsibility. He was older too, and that flattered a girl.

“He's not a bit attractive,” Nina was saying. “Quiet, and--well, I don't suppose he knows what he's got on.”

Wallie was watching Elizabeth.

“Oh, I don't know,” he said, with masculine fairness. “He's a good sort, and he's pretty much of a man.”

He was quite sure that the look Elizabeth gave him was grateful.

He went soon after that, keeping up an appearance of gaiety to the end, and very careful to hope that Elizabeth would enjoy the play.

“She's a wonder, they say,” he said from the doorway. “Take two hankies along, for it's got more tears than 'East Lynne' and 'The Old Homestead' put together.”

He went out, holding himself very erect and looking very cheerful until he reached the corner. There however he slumped, and it was a rather despondent young man who stood sometime later, on the center of the deserted bridge over the small river, and surveyed the water with moody eyes.

In the dusky living-room Nina was speaking her mind.

“You treat him like a dog,” she said. “Oh, I know you're civil to him, but if any man looked at me the way Wallie looks at you--I don't know, though,” she added, thoughtfully. “It may be that that is why he is so keen. It may be good tactics. Most girls fall for him with a crash.”

But when she glanced at Elizabeth she saw that she had not heard. Her eyes were fixed on something on the street beyond the window. Nina looked out. With a considerable rattle of loose joints and four extraordinarily worn tires the Livingstone car was going by.

David did not sleep well that night. He had not had his golf after all, for the Homer baby had sent out his advance notice early in the afternoon, and had himself arrived on Sunday evening, at the hour when Minnie was winding her clock and preparing to retire early for the Monday washing, and the Sayre butler was announcing dinner. Dick had come in at ten o'clock weary and triumphant, to announce that Richard Livingstone Homer, sex male, color white, weight nine pounds, had been safely delivered into this vale of tears.