Louise, startled that he should have read her so clearly as his words denoted, replied, with no great conviction that what she said was exactly true:
"Does not the very fact that you seem to understand so clearly furnish the best evidence?" But that sounded rather inconsequential to her, and she went on flurriedly: "I don't mean just that. Perhaps I do not know precisely what I do mean," averting her head again in her confusion, "now that you——" and she came to a futile end.
"Now that I read you aright, you were about to say," said Blythe, smiling gravely. "Well, I am not going to be ungenerous enough to triumph over you because you have virtually admitted that you were wrong—for you have so admitted, haven't you?"
Louise remained silent, her head still averted; but her hands still rested in Blythe's.
"Haven't you?" said Blythe; and she was conscious that his grasp upon her hands was tightening.
Blythe peered around to catch a view of her face, and he saw that she was faintly smiling. He did not let go of her hands, nor did she appear at all eager to have him do so.
"I have an appointment for which I am already late, and I am keen to have a look at my watch," went on Blythe, quite cheerfully, without in the least relaxing his possession of her hands. "But of course I can't look at it—I can't do anything but remain here for a week, say—until you tell me that you are wrong."
Louise turned her natural face upon him and nodded brightly—conquered, and willing to be; there was, she noticed, an inviting little hollow in his coat, between his left shoulder and the rise of his chest, which she vaguely imagined would be a very inviting spot upon which to rest, if even for a transitory moment, a tired head; Blythe was conscious of a decided response when he pressed her hands just before releasing them; and when he went out she felt that the room, somehow, had become a little darker than it had been. She knew that he had understood, and she appraised his fineness in telling her that she had been wrong at its true value; but she was not entirely convinced, and she recoiled from the thought of permitting him to make any sacrifice for her sake. But she was glad that he had divined what had been in her mind, and her heart gave a little leap when she thought that, if ever there was to be any computation of or allusion to a sacrifice, it would be on her side, and not on his; she knew now that he was above even the thought of entertaining, much less measuring, such a consideration.
Her mother came to Laura's late in the afternoon, very downcast, very plaintive on the subject of how terribly she already had missed Louise. Judd, with his customary morning penitence, had seen her at noon and made his usual abject apology; and he had endured the lash of her scornful tongue with a shaky consciousness that his conduct had been pretty outrageous even for him. He did not acknowledge how set back he was, however, when Mrs. Treharne, a tirade over, let fall the fact that Louise had gone to Laura's, and the additional fact that Louise, having been placed under John Blythe's guardianship at her father's direction, would be very well looked after and provided for. But Judd wondered, nevertheless, just how these facts would dovetail with Langdon Jesse's sweet scheme to have Louise relegated, under Judd's provision, to the depressing and chastening surroundings of a "five-by-eight flat."
Louise's heart went out to her mother when Mrs. Treharne, in an effusion of tears, told her how hideously lonesome the house on the Drive was and would continue to be without her; but the girl had difficulty in matching this with the undeniable fact that, when she told her mother that she would be sailing for Europe within a week, Mrs. Treharne, drying her tears, offhandedly pronounced that the plan was a very wise one and would be the best imaginable thing for Louise.