It was a strange relationship, but it is possible that Marian found it piquant. She seemed fascinated by Stacey, now that he was indifferent to her.
At last the girl sank lightly down upon an ottoman near the young man’s feet and gazed up at him, as on that day years before when he had come to tell her he was going to the war.
“You’re the oddest person, Stacey!” she said, her eyes shining. “Just like a great rock—a handsome rock. Why do you come to see me? You don’t need to, you know. You’ve broken our engagement—and my heart,” she continued elfishly. “I shall tell every one that you have. It will be in the newspapers. ‘Returned Hero Breaks Girl’s Heart!’ ”
This was better. There was something cool and hard in this that appealed to Stacey, wakened a sense of surface comradeship in him.
“H’m!” he remarked, smiling. “Your heart seems to be doing pretty well—if you’ve got one. Have you got one, Marian?”
“That’s a horrid habit you’ve acquired, Stacey,” she said gaily, “of never answering a question, but always asking another. I asked you why you came to see me. Well, since you won’t tell me, I’ll tell you. You come to see me just as you’d go to see the Parthenon.”
The smile faded from his face. By Jove, she was right! (Stacey Carroll, 1914, had been intelligently introspective; Stacey Carroll, 1919, could always be surprised if some one told him truth about himself. Also annoyed, generally. But not this time.) Yes, that was it, he supposed. The bodily fact of Marian wakened his atrophied sense of beauty—but differently than in the old days, austerely save for the touch of desire.
“Now when you can see things as straight as that why do you go in so for everything rococo?” he demanded harshly. “Why do you embroider and sentimentalize?”
She gazed at him, her mouth compressed, her eyes brilliant with anger—which was certainly justified. Then her expression changed and she shrugged her shoulders, gracefully.
“So you see,” she said calmly, “you were just asking a silly careless question a moment ago. You don’t care whether I have a heart or not.” She smiled again. “What an odd pair we are!” she went on. “Poor me! Not engaged any longer! Deserted after all these years! You must be sure not to tell papa until you’ve given me time to get engaged to some one else—Ames Price, I think you said I might marry. Papa would be too awfully angry.”