"You used to be willing to take a little time for pleasure," said Angela, looking away from him, "before—we had that awful misunderstanding."
"It gets worse and worse all the time!" said Charles, hastily. "That's what I say! That's writing!—yes, indeed!—inexorable—once let it into your life, and it eats it all up—forcing a man to be a—a hermit for life, you might say. But there was something I was very anxious to tell you, Miss Flower. Let me see ... slipped me for the moment. Ah—oh, yes!—did you know Donald Manford's back again?"
"Oh! No, is he? I hadn't heard."
"Yes, old Donald got back Sunday, full of pride and honors...."
And then into the eyes of the worried young man there shot a faint gleam.
He had mentioned Donald absolutely at random, but the moment he heard the youth's name on the air, an idea exploded in his brain, leaving behind a dull hope. Unlike himself, Donald was a marrying man. Why, when you stopped to think of it, wasn't Angela the very girl for him? And why, then, shouldn't he, Charles, frankly reversing his purposes at the Helen Carson luncheon last month, bring together once more these two nice, simple cousins of the too-modern Mary, just as he had done that night at the Redmantle Club, when all the trouble had begun?
Of course, at the moment, Charles's "psychology" was not quite so elaborate as this. The thought, indeed, flashed through his brain in purely concrete form, thus: "That's it! I'll put her on to Donald."
Forthwith, he launched upon a voluble talk, an address, at once extolling Donald's character and throwing out suggestive commentaries upon it: how Donald had come home in the vein of a boy let out of school, seeming to feel that at last his playtime had come; how he (so different from himself, Charles) openly sought and hungered for pleasure now, was mad for some good times. And, observing closely, he thought that Miss Angela looked interested in his exposition, too, though hardly so interested as one might have liked, perhaps.
"Why, I didn't think he was that sort of person at all," said she.
"I've never seen a man change so—come out so—in my life! Landing this great job, you know!—it's taken a great weight off him. And then the thought that he has only a few weeks more at home, too—it's really revolutionized his character! Why, Miss Flower, the man's all but quit work! Really! He ..."