Well, she had made him realize her just resentment. She had sent him away, him and his ring, not angrily, but quietly.
“If he had even said he was sorry,” she thought. “Perhaps he will to-morrow.”
All the time she undressed, the tears were running down her face.
“Because I’m so disappointed,” she told herself. “I didn’t think he’d be like that.”
She had seen him in the office every day for two months, and once she had gone out to lunch with him, and once to dinner; and she had felt that a very beautiful thing was beginning. She had seen in his gray eyes a look that made her heart beat fast, had heard in his voice a queer, grudging tenderness not to be forgotten.
She had known, of course, that he was not quite the man she had dreamed of, no knightly figure of romance. His manner was abrupt and domineering. More than once she had seen him lose his temper with some unlucky fellow worker, and speak in a grim white anger that distressed her bitterly; but he was so honest and so uncompromising! She had respected that, and had admired his tireless energy, his undoubted cleverness.
There were not many men of his age who had gone as far as he—head of a department at twenty-four. Yes, she had been justified in liking him; but there were those other things, those unreasonable things. When she thought of him, it was not his business ability that she remembered, but his quick smile, his steady glance, his way of scowling and running his hand over the back of his head.
“If he just says he’s sorry to-morrow,” she thought. “If he’ll just realize that he was—horrible!”
She fell asleep in a troubled and confused mood, and waked the next morning with a heavy heart.
“I won’t be weak and silly,” she thought. “If he’s not sorry—if he can’t show the proper respect for me—then it’s finished!”