"It had got out of hand," said he. "They do, so often. I know when I can't pull 'em together. Besides, talking's better, isn't it? You can't give your whole interest to two things at once."
How long had they known each other? Two days--less! He felt he had been talking to her constantly, over a long period of time. She knew he felt that and was kept in wonder as to what her interest could be to him.
Once definitely having put his sketch out of his mind, he lay back on the close, sharp-bitten grass, looking no more across the bay, but talking to Mary about herself. Tentative and restrained as his questions were, they sought her out. She felt no desire for concealment, but sat there, upright, as one would most times find her, drawing a thread of sea grass backwards and forwards through her fingers, answering the questions he asked, sometimes briefly, sometimes with far excursion into her mind, expressing thoughts she scarcely had been conscious of till then.
"You make me a great egotist," she said presently, with a laugh.
"Isn't yours the age for egotism?" he answered. "Why shouldn't you think about yourself when you're young, and all's in front of you? When you come up with it you'll have no time."
"When I'm young," she laughed. "You'd better guess how old I am," and she laughed again, knowing what Hannah or Jane would think to hear her.
"I don't want to guess," said he. "Suppose you were twenty-eight--or even thirty, I say all's in front of you. That's your age. That's the impression you give me."
"I'm twenty-nine," said she, and her eyebrow lifted with suppressed laughter as he sat up in his surprise to look at her.
"Twenty-nine?" he repeated. "What have you been doing with your life? Why are you here, playing an occasional game of golf, attending mothers' meetings, going to your little church every Sunday to listen to that fool of a parson you have? It's waste--waste--utter waste!"
"Have you ever thought how many women do waste in the world?" she asked and then of a sudden felt the hot sweep of blood into her face. How had it happened she had come to talk to a man and a stranger like this? Yet wasn't it true, and wasn't there some sort of exciting satisfaction in saying it? She could not have said that to Hannah, to Jane, not even to Fanny. Why was it possible to exchange such intimate thoughts with a man and he, an utter stranger she had met only the day before?