“I wonder,” he said, “if there is anything else on earth quite so vacant as the place a crowd of guests have just deserted. They always seem to have carried away with them whatever local atmosphere there was and to have left behind a vacuum of desolation.”
Letty did not answer. She was tired, nerve-worn, relaxed, after the evening’s strain. Characteristically, she was aware of a mild desire to make someone else uncomfortable. Someone who cared for her enough to be hurt. Caine suited her purpose to perfection. Hence the sheath of grieved silence that always brought him hastening to the anxious seat. The ruse prevailed now, as ever.
“You aren’t unhappy about anything, are you, dear?” he queried solicitously.
“Oh, no!” she replied, a throaty quaver in her voice.
“I haven’t done anything, have I?” came the second stereotyped question in love’s catechism.
“Oh, no!” she returned briefly with full feminine power of making the answer read, “Oh, yes!”
“But what?” he begged.
“Oh, nothing!” with the rarified loftiness that precedes a plunge into the vale of tears, “Nothing! Nothing at all.”
Nor was it until he had rung all the traditional changes on the query and had worked himself into a state of pitiable humility that she would consent to burst forth into the flood-tide of her grievances.
“You made me so unhappy,” she wept. “It was all your fault. Why did you do it? How could you?”