"I understand. You are sure all's well?"
"Sure. Wait in New York."
"I understand. Good-by."
"Good-by."
As she hung up the receiver and turned round, she startled guiltily. There was Richard, just stepping from lawn to veranda, his eyes upon her. She felt as if she had been caught violating in stealth an implied compact not to communicate with Basil. Dick's expression told her that he was reading in her eyes with whom she had been talking. When they were face to face, he on the veranda, she one step up in the doorway, she said: "He wanted to reassure himself before starting East."
Dick's lips curled slightly.
"It isn't fair for me to let you think him a coward. I made him see so clearly that——"
"You were right," he interrupted. "I wish to hear no more about it."
Her eyes flashed at his peremptory tone, reminiscent of his habit of brushing her aside as merely woman. But the thought of Winchie was a talisman against any attack of temper.
"You said last night," he went on, "that this is between you and me only. You were right. So—I've wiped him off the slate."