And Ned? After a few days he adjusted himself to the changed situation; and, man-like, forgot that it had occurred. His medical studies began to pull him—when one interest is out, others always take its place—and the old jollity of manner came racing back.
Almost at their next encounter, over which Gorgas had been a little fearful, he met her eagerly with:
“Say, old girl, Bea treats me like a civilized compatriot now. Don’t see what she ever went on a strike for. I hadn’t done anything. Honest! Nothing that I know of. Well, she’s forgiven me for doing nothing and all’s hunky-dory.... She thinks you know. Say, be a good girl and make her tell you. She’s dying to talk it out with you; but she’s afraid. Sort of nervous and shy, you know.... Oh, she’s O. K. and A1, that little girl.”
What comic animals we are, she thought as she searched his eyes and saw there nothing but loyalty to the other woman. Do not the high gods sometimes hold their hands to their faces and smile?...
Let her go, Gallagher, and, boomp! we’re at the bottom....
Surely ye knew.... I am a leper!...
What a topic of conversation for Allen Blynn when he comes down for the Easter holidays. How much should she tell? It depended much on what sort of a debate they could manage to have together. Several apocryphal versions she thought out and discarded. The best of them was a hypothetical case of a girl who had confessed. Certainly she would not have the courage to talk the affair out boldly with Allen Blynn. Not that she felt the least guilt, but any telling would, somehow, be unfair to the facts. Who could transmute into puffed vocables the rich data of life? It would be like transposing a cumulus cloud-bank into a major chord. The life and the autobiography are never the same.
When Allen Blynn came she managed to secure a large share of his time; but even the third cousin of the topic was not broached. Her voice fled from all suggestion of anything so personal; possibly because he looked so much older and stronger: his forehead seemed to bulge more, his voice had grown heavier, and new little muscles began to show about his mouth, signs of much public speaking. Instead, she plied him with questions about Holden, with which she felt only a remote interest.
And they talked of the mysterious lady. Blynn grew gay at the thought of her.
“I’m hot on her trail,” he assured her. “When I go for her at the close of the lecture, she slips out. She is always at the end of the hall. And no one knows her. I have questioned dozens of persons who have been sitting near.”