“How can I tell anything about any other woman when you are there?” he said, argumentatively, smiling at her. “You didn’t expect me to take much interest in the timbre of her voice or her trill when you had just told me——”
“Oh, yes—I know—I never told you anything,” objected the girl, laughing and drawing away her hands. “And you were so dramatic—so curious when you met her, that if I had—known you longer, I think absolutely I would have demanded an explanation. Isn’t that what they say in books—‘demand an explanation?’”
He shook his head. “I don’t know what they say in books. No book ever told me anything about this!”
The girl turned her shining, happy eyes upon him.
“How unutterably silly of me,” she said, breathlessly. “For a moment you said she was so like someone, and she had told me her story, I hardly know what I thought—imagined.” She spoke in little, broken pauses, and as she finished she laid her hand timidly on Cahill’s arm. “You said she reminded you of——”
The young man laughed happily. “The mere idea!” he said, touching her hands softly, and then he added lightly, as they moved toward the door: “What she reminded me of was an episode in my life that happened long ago and which was very uninteresting and unimportant.”
HER DECISION
MISS EVA HUNGERFORD was having a mauvais quart-d’heure, or to speak more exactly, une mauvaise demi-heure. She was lying in a long chair near her dressing-table, the pale-green satin cushions tucked closely around her, and her hands held tightly over her eyes to keep out any ray of sunlight that might enter the spectrally darkened room.