The oval brush slipped through Corrie's fingers and fell to the floor, rolling jerkily away with the light glinting on its silver mounting in a series of heliographic flashes. The owner stooped to recover it, groping for the conspicuous object as if the room were dark instead of flooded with the brightness of late afternoon.
"What do you mean?" he demanded. "What did you say? Her sense of honor——?"
"I beg your pardon," Gerard promptly apologized, aware of worse than indiscretion. "I, really, Corrie, I hardly realized what I was saying. Certainly I did not mean that the way it sounded. I only intended to say——"
What had he intended to say? What could he substitute for the spoken truth that would not wound the hearer either for himself or for the girl he loved?
"I only meant," he recommenced, "that her asking your formal release showed a careful punctiliousness not common."
Corrie had recovered his brush, now. He laid it on the chiffonier before answering.
"How do we know what is common? What is honor, anyway; what other people see or what you are? I fancy she wouldn't have written if she hadn't been sure of what I'd say," he retorted, with the first cynicism Gerard ever had seen in him. "She likes me to take the responsibility, that's about all. Well, I've done it. Did you say I was keeping dinner waiting?"
This of the once-adored Isabel! However much relief the older man felt, there came with it a sensation of shock and regret. Had Corrie lost so much of his youth, unsuspected by his daily companion? Where were the old illusions which should have blurred this sharp judgment? He made some brief reply, and presently they went downstairs.
The dinner was rather a silent affair.
"Do you want to drive me into town?" Gerard inquired, at its conclusion. "I find that I must see Carruthers before he leaves for the East, and he is stopping at the Hotel Marion. If you are tired, I will get my chauffeur."