“Well, if neither of these is the reason, I am bound,” I said, “to fall back on the theory that I am too old to recognize sweetness when I see it.”
He was in a hole now and showed it. I liked him for his confusion. I liked to think that any young man, particularly one who had been through a war so much more destructive of good manners and good morals and honest standards of living than of militarism, should still be capable of embarrassment.
“Do you mind,” he asked, “if I smoke?”
“Not at all,” I said. “Every one smokes now. Tobacco is the next thing to mother’s milk.”
He took a cigarette from a gold case and tapped it. “I’m afraid it’s only a gasper,” he explained.
“I’d rather it was a pipe,” I said.
“Pipes don’t appeal to me any more,” he replied. “I took to cigarettes in France and I’ve never gone back.”
A few whiffs seemed to give him courage. “I came to see you,” he said at last, “because I want to marry Miss Holt.”
I was silent for a minute, during which I was taking him all in, and reviewing Rose’s life, and seeing them together, and speculating on the future, and realizing how different this happy-go-lucky youth, with a touch of effrontery and few thoughts for anything but motoring and dancing, was from the husband I had been wishing for her. It is extraordinary what a lot can be thought about in sixty seconds. Meanwhile he puffed his gasper and nursed his little moustache and swung a leg with so much purple sock now exposed that a suspender was visible too.
“Do you live about here?” I asked at last. “I don’t seem to remember your face.”