“Yes. It’s Mr. Gurney.”
A faint and unfamiliar voice answered—a woman’s voice, exceedingly pleasant, with a soft slurring accent. It was a voice that, whatever it said, seemed to be saying, “I do want you to like me.”
“I didn’t quite catch. Would you mind speaking a little louder?” he asked.
There was a laughing dispute at the other end; then the voice which he had heard at first spoke again:
“This is Janice Audrey, Desire’s friend—Fluffy. Desire’s too shy to phone herself, so I—— She’s here at my elbow. She says that she’s not shy any longer and she’ll speak with you herself.”
It was as though he could feel her gray eyes watching.
A pause. Then, without preliminaries: “You can’t guess where I am. For all you know, I might be dead and this might be my ghost.—No. Let me do the talking. It’s long distance from Boston and expensive; I don’t know how many cents per second. If you were here, I’d let you do the paying; but since you’re not—— Here’s what I called up to tell you: we’re coming in on the Bay State Limited at three o’clock.—I thought you’d be interested. Ta-ta.”
He commenced a hurried question; she had rung off.
Adorably casual! Adorably because she contradicted herself. By calling him up all the way from Boston she had said, “See how much I care.” By not allowing him to speak, she had tried to say, “I don’t care at all.” It amused him; the odd thing was that he loved her the more for her languid struggles to escape him. He agreed with her entirely that the woman who said “No” bewitchingly increased her value. As he finished his breakfast he reflected: she was dearer to him now than a week ago, and much dearer than on the drive from Glastonbury. Instead of blaming her for making herself elusive, he ought to thank her. He’d been too headlong at the start. He fell to making plans to take Vashti’s advice: he wouldn’t speak to her of love any more—he’d try to hide from her how much he was in earnest.
In his eagerness not to disappoint her, he had reached the Grand Central a quarter of an hour too early. He was standing before the board on which the arriving trains are chalked up, when from behind some one touched him.