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Wallie turned to Elizabeth when she had gone, slightly bewildered.
"What's got into her?" he inquired. And then, seeing Elizabeth's white
face, rather shrewdly: "That was one for him and two for you, was it?"
"I don't know. Probably."
"I wonder if you would look like that if any one attacked me!"
"No one attacks you, Wallie."
"That's not an answer. You wouldn't, would you? It's different, isn't
it?"
"Yes. A little."
He straightened, and looked past her, unseeing, at the wall. "I guess
I've known it for quite a while," he said at last. "I didn't want to
believe it, so I wouldn't. Are you engaged to him?"
"Yes. It's not to be known just yet, Wallie."
"He's a good fellow," he said, after rather a long silence. "Not that
that makes it easier," he added with a twisted smile. Then, boyishly and
unexpectedly he said, "Oh, my God!"
He sat down, and when the dog came and placed a head on his knee he
patted it absently. He wanted to go, but he had a queer feeling that
when he went he went for good.
"I've cared for you for years," he said. "I've been a poor lot, but I'd
have been a good bit worse, except for you."
And again: "Only last night I made up my mind that if you'd have me, I'd make
something out of myself. I suppose a man's pretty weak when he puts a
responsibility like that on a girl."
She yearned over him, rather. She made little tentative overtures of
friendship and affection. But he scarcely seemed to hear them, wrapped
as he was in the selfish absorption of his disappointment. When she
heard the postman outside and went to the door for the mail, she thought
he had not noticed her going. But when she returned he was watching her
with jealous, almost tragic eyes.
"I suppose you hear from him by every mail."
"There has been nothing to-day."
Something in her voice or her face made him look at her closely.
"Has he written at all?"
"The first day he got there. Not since."
He went away soon, and not after all with the feeling of going for
good. In his sceptical young mind, fed by Clare's malice, was growing a
comforting doubt of Dick's good faith.