“We were speaking of you to-day,” I went on. “Evelyn hasn’t been well, and she said she wished you would come up.” I stole a side look at him and saw that his face looked stiff and that his eyes were steadily fixed ahead. He didn’t look encouraging.
“I am flattered,” he said; and the way he said it made the snow-banks warm little nesting-places in comparison.
I knew he wasn’t at all flattered, but just said so to let me know he wasn’t. I tried a little more finesse, and it didn’t work, and then--I dropped tact, which has never done a thing for me but make me trip, and relied on crude truth.
“Didn’t you like Evelyn?” I asked. I was sure he did, or I wouldn’t have said what I then did.
“Very charming girl,” he said stiffly.
“Then why do you hurt her?” I asked. He looked at me after that.
“What?” he asked. I repeated my question. And he echoed it in a vacant way, only putting “I” in place of “you.”
“You do,” I assured him.
Then he spoke, quickly, to the point, and in a way that left no doubt as to how he felt. “She turned me off,” he said, “because I hadn’t enough money. Left me in no doubt about how she felt and how much she valued what I offered her. That didn’t seem to count. The fact that my salary is modest did.” And after that he walked so fast that I almost had to run to keep up with him.
“If she were sick,” I said, “wouldn’t you stick to her, help her--do anything you could for her?”