Suspecting all his approaches, she confined herself to saying, "I'm sure I don't know," speaking like a guilty witness under cross-examination. The assiduity of his visits, the persistency with which he tried to make her talk, kept her the more carefully on her guard against betraying anything unwarily.
But to him the reserve was an added charm. He called it shyness or coyness or maidenly timidity, according to the circumstance that called it forth; but whatever it was, this apathy to his passionate dumb-show piqued him to a frenzy infused with an element of homage. Any other girl in her situation would have come half-way at least toward a man in his. His training having rendered him analytical of the physical side of things, he endeavored, more or less unsuccessfully, to account for the extraordinary transformation in himself, whereby every nerve in his body yearned and strained toward this hard, proud little creature who, too evidently—as yet, at any rate—refused to take him into account. She made him feel like a man signaling in the dark or speaking across a vacuum through which his voice couldn't carry, while he was conscious at the same time of searchings of heart at making the attempts to do either.
He was beset by these scruples when, after taking his runabout from the garage, in order to go to town, he met Lois Willoughby in the Square. On the instant he remembered Dearlove's counsel of a few days earlier—"He'd 'ave to ease the first one off a bit." Whatever was to be his ultimate decision, the wisdom of this course was incontestable. As she paused, smiling, expecting him to stop, he lifted his hat and drove onward. Perhaps it was only his imagination that caught in her great, velvety brown eyes an expression of surprise and pain; but whether his sight was accurate or not, the memory of the moment smote him. The process of "easing the first one off" would probably prove difficult. "I shall have to explain to her that I was in a hurry," he said, to comfort himself, as he flew onward to the town.
The explanation would have been not untrue, since he was already overdue at his appointment with Mr. William Darling, his grandfather's executor.
It was the second of the meetings arranged for giving him a general idea of the estate he was coming into. At the first he had gone over the lists of stocks, mortgages, and bonds. To-day, with a map of the city and the surrounding country spread out, partially on the desk and partially over Mr. Darling's knees as he tilted back in a revolving-chair, Thor learned the location of certain bits of landed property which his grandfather, twenty or thirty years before, had considered good investments. The astuteness of this ancestral foresight was illustrated by the fact that Thor was a richer man than he had supposed. While he would possess no enormous wealth, according to the newer standards of the day, he would have something between thirty and forty thousand dollars of yearly income.
"And that," Mr. Darling explained with pride, "at a very conservative rate of investment. You could easily have more; but if you take my advice you'll not be in a hurry to look for more till you need it. I don't want to hurt any one's feelings. You surely understand that."
Thor was not sure that he did understand it. He was not sure; and yet he hesitated to ask for the elucidation of what was intended perhaps to remain cryptic. In a small chair drawn up beside Mr. Darling's revolving seat of authority, his elbow on his knee, his chin supported by his fist, he studied the map.
"I don't want to hurt any one's feelings," the lawyer declared again, "either before or after the fact."
This time an intention of some sort was so evident that Thor felt obliged to say, "Do you mean any one in particular, sir?"