It was a question he could not answer truthfully, and like all the polite world he evaded it.
"My work is my excuse," he said; "and then I've not been in a mood for sociability."
Ethel looked at him long and earnestly, reading him, as she read most men, like an open book.
"Winn, my dear old friend," she said at last, in the open-your-heart tone so natural to her, "I made you a promise long ago and I shall keep it, so forgive my question. But you needn't fear me. I want to be your friend and feel you are mine, in spite of the old score and this new influence. And when you are ready to trust me, no one in the world shall be more worthy of it."
Then they drifted to commonplaces: she, as all women will, relating the gossip of her set and chatting of the latest opera, what was on at the theatres and the like. Now and then she let fall a word of quiet flattery, or what was more potent, one by inference; for Ethel Sherman was past-mistress in that art. And all the while she looked at Winn, smiling deference to his opinions and pointing hers about others with a keen wit so natural to her.
She played and sang, selecting as once before (and unfortunately, perhaps) the songs that carried his thoughts to Rockhaven.
So charming was she in all this, when she chose, that the evening sped by while Winn was unconscious of its lapse.
"I wish you would be more neighborly," she said, when he rose to go; "there are so few men in my set whom I can speak to as freely as you, and besides I want to watch your progress toward an editorial chair. Forget your old grudge, and let us be good friends once more."
And when he was gone, and she ready to retire, she looked long and earnestly at a photograph of him she had scarce glanced at thrice in three years. "I wish he were rich," she sighed; "what a delightful lover he would make!"