But again she contrived to detain him. “Wait. When will you come to see me again, Paul?”
“Oh, almost any time.”
“But when? What day?”
This urgency, though gentle, bothered him, and he wished he hadn’t thought of using Elsie’s telephone. He was a youth much sought, as he had reason to be pleasantly aware, and life offered him many more interesting vistas than the prospect of an afternoon or an evening or a substantial part of either, to be spent tête-à-tête with Elsie Hemingway. Pressed to give a definite reason why such a prospect dismayed him, he might have been puzzled. Elsie wasn’t exactly a bore; she wasn’t bad-looking, and nobody disliked her. Probably he would have fallen back upon an explanation that would have been satisfactory enough to most of the young people with whom he and Elsie had “grown up.” Elsie was “just Elsie Hemingway,” he would have said, implying an otherwise unexplainable something inherent in Elsie herself, and nothing derogatory to the Hemingway family.
“When will you come, Paul?”
“Why—why, right soon, Elsie. Honestly I will. I’ll try to, that is. Honestly I’ll——”
“Paul, it’s true you haven’t been here in over two years.” Elsie’s voice trembled a little more perceptibly. “The last time you were here was when you came to Mother’s funeral. You had to come then, because you had to bring your mother.”
“Oh, no,” he said, a little shocked at this strange reference. “I was gl—— I mean I wanted to come. I’ll come again, too, some day, before long. I must run, Elsie. The girls——”
“You won’t say when?” She spoke gravely, looking at him steadily, and there was more in her eyes than he saw, for he was not interested in finding what was there, or in anything except in his escape to the gaiety outdoors.
He laughed reassuringly. “Oh, sometime before very long. I’ll honestly try to get ’round. Honestly, I will, Elsie. Listen!”