They had traveled for fully twenty minutes in silence; to Teddy it had seemed as many hours. The patches of waste-land with hoardings, advertising chewing-gums and New York plays, were growing less frequent. A sea-look was softening the blueness of the sky. The greenness by the roadside remained unmarred for longer and longer stretches. They skirted a little bay, where power-boats lay tethered to buoys and a white-winged yacht was spreading sail. They panted through a town of scattered wooden houses, cool with lawns and shadowy with trees. Then they came to a sandy turf-land, across which a horseman distantly galloped, leaping ditches and hurdles.
He paid scant attention to his changing surroundings. He kept gazing at the girl at his side. He feared to raise his eyes from her for a second, lest she should drift away like thistledown.
Was she asleep or pretending? Why should she be asleep, when they had so much to say and she had been up for barely three hours? Her ungloved hand screened her eyes. He suspected that she was spying on him through her fingers. Did it amuse her to torment him with silence? She had done that with variations from the moment of their meeting at Glastonbury. He couldn’t understand her motive in trying to make him wretched. His impulse, if he liked people, was to make them glad. He became ingenious in unearthing reasons for her conduct. Perhaps she was getting ready to confess the thing for which she had to ask his forgiveness. Perhaps she was offended by his request that she should remove her glove. But she hadn’t seemed offended at the time of asking. And, if she were, how trivial! She need only have refused him. She’d given him far graver causes for offense.
He had reached this point in his despair, when suddenly she uncovered her face and sat up vivaciously.
“Smell the sea! Cheer up. We’re nearly there.”
Darting out her hand, she patted his knee, laughing gayly at her familiarity.
“You are restful You don’t expect me to chatter all the time. People need to be very good friends to be able to sit silent. I know men who’d be quite snappy if I—— But you’re different.”
She spoke caressingly, giving him credit for a delicacy which he did not merit. He felt cheap in the accepting of it He wasn’t at all convinced of her sincerity. He had the uncomfortable sense that she was aware that he wasn’t convinced of it.
“Poor you! You do look squashed. One would think you weren’t enjoying yourself. Was it really only business that brought you to America?”
He smiled crookedly, making a lame effort to clamber back to her level of high spirits. “Didn’t you arrange that we were going only to be sensible?”