It seemed that she and Jim
were saying something to each other. Then just as she turned to go, he
stopped her.
"You'll forgive me, because I'm an old friend of Tom's," he was urging,
"if I ask you to drive to town with Tom and myself for supper."
There was an incongruity in the request that could not have escaped
either of them. I could see the color mounting to her temples and then
ebbing away, leaving her whiter than before. Her lips parted to answer,
but closed again sturdily.
"It couldn't--be arranged. If it could, I should have liked to," she
supplemented stiffly.
It was a stiffness that made me want to cry out to the hilltops in
rebellion.
"But suppose it _could_ be arranged?" suggested Jim.
She looked away from us.
"It couldn't be," she replied in that same inflectionless voice.
It was her voice that cut so sharply. I reflected that it was only in
the very old that we could bear that look of dead desire, that absence
of all seeking, that was settling over her face.
"But you'll try," insisted Jim. "You won't say no now?"
With one reddened hand she smoothed the surface of her dress. "I'll
try," she promised faintly.
Dinner over, prompted perhaps by a desire to look the old place over by
myself, perhaps half inclined to pay a visit to Con, I left Jim in the
library to his own devices, and stepped out alone along the road.
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