They regarded each other a minute.
"You seem to have changed, Hazel!"
He was sorry he had said it. She blushed and did not look him squarely in the face as she replied:
"Hard work."
Evan sat wondering, in silence. Hazel had had a nice home in Mt. Alban. Had she run away from it? And how was it that she looked so subdued?—she used to be a vivacious creature, fond of dresses and gaiety. Now she wore a plain white waist and a skirt of cheap blue serge. The Mt. Alban color was gone, and pensiveness dusked her intelligent face.
It was, doubtless, to break the embarrassing silence creeping between them that Hazel asked Evan if he worked hard in Hamilton. How long had he been in that branch of the bank?
"I'll tell you after the show," he answered, "if you'll have dinner with me at the —— Hotel. We can go for a paddle afterwards."
She smiled and said it was very kind of him and that she would just love to spend the evening in that way.
In the second act Evan noticed that Hazel wiped her eyes frequently with a miniature handkerchief. He felt like doing it himself in the next act, and Hazel sobbed audibly. Of course, she was not the only weeping woman at that matinee.
At dinner a glow of the girl's old-time color came back, and with it a charm that Evan had noticed in her eyes at Mt. Alban dances, when a certain bankclerk was hovering near.