"Oh, Les!"
When they had kissed he broke the curious spell by demanding, with considerable passion, why, if she really did care, she was so willing to throw him over for another man. It seemed a pivotal question. It seemed an unanswerable one, even, in the light of what had just occurred. But Miss Needham, now the spell was broken and she could breathlessly begin getting hold of herself again, proved magnificently equal to it. The beauty of the Needham logic was just that it could always find an answer to every question, however pivotal—some kind of answer, that is.
"Oh, Leslie!" she cried. "Don't you see? I'm not throwing you over. Not the way you want to make it seem. I care for you just the same as—yes, as I ever did! Why shouldn't I?" she demanded, with vague defiance. "Only I—I suppose some of the things we've done—what we just did.... Well, and the other times, aren't—I suppose they wouldn't be quite right if I'm to be formally engaged. But you see I—I've looked upon this engagement—I mean I've looked upon it as not quite settled yet...." She faltered and spoke more thickly, as though getting down to cold facts somehow made the whole business a little tawdry. "I'm not wearing any ring yet, you see," she went on, waving her hand before them a trifle awkwardly, and laughing with constraint. "And as long as Mr. Barry and I aren't really engaged—not quite in the usual way yet, I mean—I didn't see—I don't see now what harm there is in making—well, new friends."
It was an amazing speech. It was a wonderful speech. He offered no immediate reply to it. What could he say? The fact is, he had never heard just such a speech as this in his life, and found himself, not perhaps unreasonably, a little bit bewildered by it. None of the lessons in feminine psychology he had learned thus far had just prepared Leslie for such a speech as this. As abruptly as they had paused, the two now resumed their walk. And from this moment his attitude toward her was also altered.
Louise started slightly, as though for the first time fully realizing what had just taken place. She glanced at her wrist watch. It was ten minutes to five by the tiny dial.
"I hope we can make it," she said anxiously. The return to her former preoccupations might have struck a disinterested observer as bizarre, though of course Louise wasn't conscious of anything like that. She was not conscious of anything bizarre at all. It was really extraordinary, at times, how free from any blemish of self-consciousness she seemed to be. This was her way: giving herself over entirely to one thing at a time. Curiously enough, it even had something to do with what has (carefully weighing values) been called her fundamental honesty; though here, as so often with her, the true spring was not involved. Concentration was one of the sturdy precepts expounded by the Rev. Alfred Needham. The influence of this father was very strongly marked in the daughter. But as for Leslie, he was keenly conscious, walking beside her through the lovely forest of Betsey, of a shift which seemed to him untimely and again humiliating. He grew reserved and cold; walked along in silence. However, his thoughts were busy. And the more he thought of it, the more convinced he was that that phrase of hers: "I don't see what harm there is in making new friends," sounded a warning which he must heed! Louise glanced again at her watch to make quite sure she had read the hour aright.
"Les," she demanded, wholly consumed now with the apprehension lest she miss her train, "is your watch with mine?"
"I have five minutes to five," he answered coldly, pressing open the case of his old-fashioned heirloom watch and quickly snapping it shut again. He snapped it as quickly as he could because he did not want to let his eyes rest on the picture pasted inside the case.
"Do you think we can make it?"
"I've made it in less time, a good deal."