I could have whipped her, and my voice stung more than my words.
Our eyes met; a real hatred in hers leaping up to meet mine.
“Let's play tennis,” I said, after a moment's pause.
“No,” she answered shortly, “I'm going indoors.”
“Very well.”
And that ended the affair with Sybil.
I was still in the full glare of this disillusionment when Gertrude awoke from some preoccupation to an interest in my existence. She developed a disposition to touch my hand by accident, and let her fingers rest in contact with it for a moment,—she had pleasant soft hands;—she began to drift into summer houses with me, to let her arm rest trustfully against mine, to ask questions about Cambridge. They were much the same questions that Sybil had asked. But I controlled myself and maintained a profile of intelligent and entirely civil indifference to her blandishments.
What Gertrude made of it came out one evening in some talk—I forget about what—with Sybil.
“Oh, Dick!” said Gertrude a little impatiently, “Dick's Pi.”
And I never disillusioned her by any subsequent levity from this theory of my innate and virginal piety.