He looked at her oddly. This was not the pert, saucy, little girl he had taken from Bender, nor the little playmate of the children, nor yet the quiet, domestic woman who had served him that night in the kitchen.
There was an indefinable charm about her that defied definition or analysis—a rapt, exquisite look that lifted her up—up to his primitive ideal.
“Pen!”
He started toward her, seemed to remember, hesitated and then asked lamely:
“What have you been doing all day?”
Her former little air of raillery crept back momentarily at his change of tone.
“A narrow escape,” she thought, as she said aloud, reckless of consequences: “I motored into town by myself; bought some new clothes; had dinner with an old friend; saw an aeroplane go up and—”
He smiled in a bored way and asked her some irrelevant question.
“The easiest way to deceive, as Hebby always said, is to tell the truth,” she thought.