“Yes?—anything—”
“Well—about Miss Rossiter—you'll be seeing her I suppose?”
“Oh yes, often—”
“Well, you might just keep her in mind of me. I know it sounds silly but—just a word or two, sometimes.”
He felt that he was blushing—their hands separated. She moved back from him and pushed at her hair in the nervous way that she had.
“Why, of course—she was awfully interested. She won't forget you. Well, we'll meet at supper.” She moved back with a last little nod at him and he went awkwardly out of the room with a curious little sense of sudden dismissal. Would she rather he didn't know Miss Rossiter, he vaguely wondered. Women were such queer creatures.
As he went downstairs he wondered with a sudden almost shameful confusion whether he was responsible in some way for the awkwardness that the scene had had. He had noticed lately that she had not been quite herself when he had been with her—that she would stop in the middle of a sentence, that she would be, for instance, vexed at something he said, that she would look at him sometimes as though ...
He pulled himself up. He was angry with himself for imagining such a thing—as though ... Well, women were strange creatures....
And then supper was more difficult than he had expected. They would show him, the silly things, that they were fond of him just when he would much rather have persuaded himself that they hated him. It was almost, as he told himself furiously, as though they knew that he was going; Norah Monogue was the only person who chattered and laughed in a natural way; he was rather relieved that after all she seemed to care so little.
He found that he couldn't eat. There was a silly lump in his throat and he looked at the marble pillars and the heavy curtains through a kind of mist.... Especially was there Robin....