“No,” she said. “I never have. Why do you ask it?”
“But you may,” he said.
“Have you some one in view for me?” In her voice was a certain elusive tone, unresolved between doubt and irony, that he knew and hated. It made him uneasy. Sometimes it made him feel small.
“Seriously, I have,” he replied. “That is to say, I have hoped you might become interested that way in Enoch Gib. You know what I think of him. He will be a great man in this country if nothing happens.”
“Does it much concern your happiness?” she asked. There was that tone again.
“I wouldn’t put it that way,” he said. “I am thinking of your future. It would give me a sense of great comfort.”
This was at dinner’s end one evening when they were alone. As he talked, with his eyes down, he traced a figure on the table cloth with a spoon, making it deeper and deeper as his unease increased. He felt all the time that she was regarding him with a wide, impenetrable expression.
“Oh,” she said, after an interval of silence.
He started and looked at her furtively. She was regarding him freely. There was in her expression the trace of an ambiguous, amused smile. He blushed and rose from the table.
Expectations increased. More marriages take place under the tyranny of expectation than Heaven imagines. New Damascus society became tensely expectant.