"And there's a more especial reason why I want you here."
"And there's an even more especial reason why I must see you here," insisted he. "It's very unsatisfactory, talking over the telephone, with people probably listening all along the wire. I'll come to-morrow—or late this afternoon. But you come here first."
"No—really, I mustn't," she declared. "Don't you trust me? Don't you know I'd not ask it, if it weren't perfectly—all right?"
"It isn't that, but— I can't talk about it.... I'll come." And from his tone she knew he had been decided by the fear that she'd think him afraid. And then she realized that she had made her remark because she counted on its appeal to his vanity—and the thought acted upon her enthusiasm not unlike a douche.
XXVIII
She was on the drive-front porch with Lizzie, making plausible pretense of rearranging the boxed evergreens. She heard the carriage turn in at the gates, though they were nearly a quarter of a mile from the house. As the horses rounded the bend she looked. But she waited on Lizzie, who was not slow to cry out with delighted surprise, "Why, there's Mr. Gallatin!"
Courtney said, "Do run in and see that the sitting room's straight." Thus, she was alone when he descended. She saw him through a mist and the hand she gave him was cold, was trembling. In the doorway, she said hastily in an undertone: "Helen and Winchie are at Wenona—Richard at the laboratory. You've stopped unexpectedly on your way south—for an hour or two."
"I understand," said he. "I can't trust myself to look at you. My love! My love!"
She flashed up at him a glance radiant with her florid fancies of anticipation. "Come into the house," she contrived to say in an ordinary tone.
As they went along the hall, side by side and talking for effect on possible listeners, she saw that he had dressed as carefully as a bridegroom. No more carefully than she had dressed, so far as she dared; still, it struck her as amusing—as suggestive of hollowness. And the voice which, as she heard it in fancy during those weeks of waiting, had been so moving, so magical—what a commonplace voice it was, and how very like affectation its Eastern intonations sounded. "That nasty remark of Richard's!" she thought. "How weak of me to let such a thing affect me." They entered the sitting room; he quickly closed the door, caught her hands, looked at her from head to foot. "Courtney!" he murmured. "I love you! I love you!"