She stepped back, puzzled. "But of course I know!" she said. "Haven't I been working on it for weeks! Why, it was right here in this room that they decided on it. Days ago. I've been trying frantically to find you ever since."
"Oh," he said, "you mean The Outcry. I thought you were congratulating me on my engagement to marry Mary."
She stared at him in simple blank incredulity. "To marry Mary! Mary
Wollaston? You don't mean that seriously?"
"It's the only serious fact in the world," he assured her.
"But John—Does John know about it?" she demanded.
"Yes," he said.
She drew a long breath, then pounced upon him with another question. "Did you tell him about it, or was it Mary who did?"
"It was I," March said. "I was the first one to see him after it happened."
"He hadn't suspected anything, had he?" she persisted.
She was vaguely aware that he was a little puzzled and perhaps in the same degree amused by her intensity, but she had no interest in half tones of that sort.