"Oh, New York—Boston—Chicago—different places." I did my best to be vague.
I noticed for the first time then a shade of wistfulness in Mildred Averill's brown eyes as she said:
"You seem to have moved about a good deal."
"Oh yes. I wanted—I wanted to see what was happening."
"And you saw it?"
Averill asked me that, his gaze still fixed on me thoughtfully.
"Enough for the present."
There was a pause of some seconds during which I could hear the unuttered question of all three, "Why don't you tell us who you are?" It was a kindly question, with nothing but sympathy behind it. It was, in fact, a tacit offer of friendship, if I would only take it up. More plainly than they could have expressed themselves in words, it said: "We like you. We are ready to be your friends. Only give us the least little bit of encouragement. Link yourself up with something we know. Don't be such a mystery, because mystery breeds suspicion."
When I let it go by Mildred Averill began to talk somewhat at random. She didn't want that significant silence to be repeated. I had had my chance and I hadn't taken it. Very well, my reasons would be respected, but I couldn't keep people from wondering. That was what I knew she was saying, though her actual words referred to our expedition of a few days previously.
And of that she spoke with an intonation that associated me with herself. She and I had taken two nice young people of the working-classes for an outing. Let me hasten to say that there was no condescension in what she said; condescension wasn't in her; there was only the implication that whatever the ground she stood on, I stood on that ground, too. She threw out a hint that as New York in these September days was barely waking from its summer lethargy, and there was little to fill time, we might all four do the same again.