V
When Cecil came again the next afternoon, she could think of no good reason for refusing to see him. After all, what had she against him? Nothing at all—nothing real. He hadn’t said a word that she could resent. It was only—well, she didn’t know what—something in his smile, in his tired eyes.
“It’s my own fault,” she decided. “I know he’d be all right, if I weren’t so—silly. If I had more poise—”
This afternoon she had an unusual amount of poise, for she had had a letter from Denis that made her happy. She was Denis’s wife, and she really didn’t care a snap of her fingers about any one else on earth.
She found Cecil charming that day.
“Let’s go out somewhere,” he suggested. “It would do me no end of good—that is, if you’ll be jolly and a little bit kind to me. I’m not happy to-day, Emily.”
She believed that. She fancied that perhaps he was never very happy, and she felt sorry for him. She was still more sorry when she saw how quickly he responded to her own cheerful mood.
It cannot be denied that this very superficiality of his made him a most engaging companion. They took a taxi up to the Botanical Gardens, went into the hemlock forest there, and wandered about for two hours, breaking the enchanted stillness with their careless, happy talk, without a moment’s constraint or weariness. Away from hotels and family conventions, Cecil was a very different fellow. His polite sophistication vanished, and with it his misleading pretense of being a cheerful idiot. He wasn’t that. He was clever, adroit, and by no means apathetic.
As the sun was beginning to sink, they strolled out of the forest and across the hilltop and the smooth meadows, past the greenhouses, to the entrance. It was growing chilly, and they were tired and furiously hungry.
“We’ll have tea now,” said Cecil. “Please don’t always object, Emily!”