“No; she didn’t say anything about you to me; I just guessed. And as long as I have guessed, I think you ought to tell me why.”
There was a pause as a third man in livery came between them with the soup, an opportunity he enriched by looking at Jerry; then he said: “To tell you why—would not make dinner conversation. But a young girl flaunting her conscious beauty and youth does not interest me, any more than I would give other than a passing look to a large coloured advertisement on a billboard.”
“And how about older women?” she asked, letting his statement pass without battle.
“Oh—they have either lost interest in life and are only pretending, or their minds are one-track affairs.”
“My——” said Joy thoughtfully. “It must be awful to be a bachelor.”
They both laughed then, and Jerry looked across the table with an answering gleam. His eyes caught hers for an intimate moment; then she turned back to Mabel and he to Joy.
“I admit it sounded humourous,” he said. “But I told you, the rest would not be dinner conversation.”
“When did you go across?” she asked abruptly. Her words carried across the table, and Jerry’s polite attention to Mabel took on another tin.
“In the fall of ’17.”
So she had been right in her random suggestion! Mabel, hearing a fragment of their conversation through Jerry’s silence, proudly contributed the fact that Phil had just been promoted to the rank of major when the armistice was signed. The girl with the white forehead and Mabel’s husband were deep in a steady stream of discussion which flowed on during the pauses of the rest of the dinner party.