"But if you are----" she began; and then, looking at him with a desperate sweetness, as if this were her last resource to rouse him, "What's the matter, little boy?" she said with lisping tenderness. "Tell auntie!"

It was a mistake, for he seemed to flinch, and to lean backward, however, slightly. She turned away instantly, with a flippant lift and drop of both hands. "Oh, my dear!" she laughed. "I won't eat you!"

And as the discomfited young man watched her, seeming able to lift his eyes, now that her back was turned, she went to the front door and pushed open the screen. "Let's go out on the porch," she said. "Where we belong!"

Then, when he had followed her out, and they were seated, "Isn't this better?" she asked. "Don't you feel more like yourself out here?"

He began a murmur: "Not at----"

But she cut him off sharply: "Please don't say 'Not at all' again!"

"I'm sorry."

"You do seem sorry about something," she said. "What is it? Isn't it time you were telling me what's the matter?"

"Nothing. Indeed nothing's the matter. Of course one IS rather affected by such weather as this. It may make one a little quieter than usual, of course."

She sighed, and let the tired muscles of her face rest. Under the hard lights, indoors, they had served her until they ached, and it was a luxury to feel that in the darkness no grimacings need call upon them.

"Of course, if you won't tell me----" she said.

"I can only a.s.sure you there's nothing to tell."

"I know what an ugly little house it is," she said. "Maybe it was the furniture--or mama's vases that upset you. Or was it mama herself--or papa?"

"Nothing 'upset' me."

At that she uttered a monosyllable of doubting laughter. "I wonder why you say that."

"Because it's so."

"No. It's because you're too kind, or too conscientious, or too embarra.s.sed--anyhow too something--to tell me." She leaned forward, elbows on knees and chin in hands, in the reflective att.i.tude she knew how to make graceful. "I have a feeling that you're not going to tell me," she said, slowly. "Yes--even that you're never going to tell me. I wonder--I wonder----"

"Yes? What do you wonder?"

"I was just thinking--I wonder if they haven't done it, after all."

"I don't understand."

"I wonder," she went on, still slowly, and in a voice of reflection, "I wonder who HAS been talking about me to you, after all? Isn't that it?"

"Not at----" he began, but checked himself and subst.i.tuted another form of denial. "Nothing is 'it.'"

"Are you sure?"

"Why, yes."

"How curious!" she said.

"Why?"

"Because all evening you've been so utterly different."

"But in this weather----"

"No. That wouldn't make you afraid to look at me all evening!"

"But I did look at you. Often."

"No. Not really a LOOK."

"But I'm looking at you now."

"Yes--in the dark!" she said. "No--the weather might make you even quieter than usual, but it wouldn't strike you so nearly dumb. No--and it wouldn't make you seem to be under such a strain--as if you thought only of escape!"

"But I haven't----"

"You shouldn't," she interrupted, gently. "There's nothing you have to escape from, you know. You aren't committed to--to this friendship."

"I'm sorry you think----" he began, but did not complete the fragment.

She took it up. "You're sorry I think you're so different, you mean to say, don't you? Never mind: that's what you did mean to say, but you couldn't finish it because you're not good at deceiving."

"Oh, no," he protested, feebly. "I'm not deceiving. I'm----"

"Never mind," she said again. "You're sorry I think you're so different--and all in one day--since last night. Yes, your voice SOUNDS sorry, too. It sounds sorrier than it would just because of my thinking something you could change my mind about in a minute so it means you're sorry you ARE different."

"No--I----"

But disregarding the faint denial, "Never mind," she said. "Do you remember one night when you told me that nothing anybody else could do would ever keep you from coming here? That if you--if you left me it would be because I drove you away myself?"

"Yes," he said, huskily. "It was true."

"Are you sure?"

"Indeed I am," he answered in a low voice, but with conviction.

"Then----" She paused. "Well--but I haven't driven you away."

"No."

"And yet you've gone," she said, quietly.

"Do I seem so stupid as all that?"

"You know what I mean." She leaned back in her chair again, and her hands, inactive for once, lay motionless in her lap. When she spoke it was in a rueful whisper:

"I wonder if I HAVE driven you away?"