“I hate to make people angry. I was distressed that evening on the pier.”
He looked up, startled.
“I suppose I talked like Wilsey that night?”
“You said you might be old-fashioned but—”
“Don’t, please, tell me what I said, Mrs. Wayne.” He went on more seriously: “I’ve got to an age when I can’t expect great happiness from life—just a continuance of fairly satisfactory outside conditions; but since I’ve known you, I’ve felt a lightening, a brightening, an intensifying of my own inner life that I believe comes as near happiness as anything I’ve ever felt, and I don’t want to lose it on account of a reactionary old couple like that on the sofa over there.”
He dreaded being left alone with the reactionary old couple when presently Mrs. Wayne, very well pleased with her evening, took her departure. He assisted her into her taxi, and as he came upstairs with a buoyant step, he wished it were not ridiculous at his age to feel so light-hearted.
He saw that his absence had given his guests an instant of freer criticism, for they were tucking away smiles as he entered.
“A very unusual type, is she not, our friend, Mrs. Wayne?” said Wilsey.
“A little bit of a reformer, I’m afraid,” said Mrs. Baxter.
“Don’t be too hard on her,” answered Lanley.