"Do you think for a minute—" I began indignantly, with no clear idea of how I was going to finish: so perhaps it was just as well that I was interrupted.
"I don't think anything at all," he said, "but I know that I shouldn't have gone away. Had I known the day was going to turn out such a scorcher, I would have stayed."
His tone implied that what he should have known was that I was not fit to be trusted alone. I didn't like the implication, and I said so.
After which, at the end of ten minutes, I had positively flounced from the room, after the manner of our grandmothers, and left him sitting there.
I didn't see him again until dinner. It was not a particularly joyful meal.
During the rather silent progress of dinner, I had the grace to be rather ashamed of some of the things I had said. In the cooler light of reason, I looked on a number of the statements I had made and found them unconvincing.
Our sporadic conversation was of trivial things. Not until Wing had departed kitchenward, and Bill lighted his after-luncheon cigarette, was our late unpleasantness alluded to.
"Mavis," said my husband, with a hint of the old, ironic smile I had not seen in many weeks, and which immediately alienated me from him, "I'm afraid that we were both a little tired and over-wrought this morning. And for anything I said which may have offended you, I am quite ready to ask your pardon. However, it is, perhaps, just as well that I understand the way you feel about me. I am, admittedly then, a 'brute': and I have 'presumed' to criticize you, unfairly and without cause—or so you have said. Let that pass. The most important thing is that you are becoming bored with this solitary confinement, and it so happens that it is within my power to offer you more congenial companionship. I had a letter this morning from Wright Penny—you recall him, do you not? He is in Santiago, and proposes to come to Havana and run out to see us. If it is agreeable to you, I shall wire him to come on prepared to stay, and to return North with us when we go. Would you like that?"
Seven times seven little devils entered into me then, and I clasped my hands on the table and made my eyes round with pleasure.
"I would be delighted," I said, sincerely enough. "I liked Mr. Penny—what little I saw of him. And I am sure that he would be a congenial house-guest."