Tom had taken a rather personal tone of late with Gabrielle, a tone that the girl found vaguely disquieting. Now he was asking her, half smiling, and half earnest, if she had ever been in love. And as he asked it, he put his lean brown hand over hers, as it lay on the rocks beside him. Gay did not look down at their hands, but her heart rose in her breast, and she wriggled her own warm fingers slightly, as a hint to be set free.
“Have I ever been in love? Yes, I think so, Tom.”
“Oh, you think so? As bad as that! A lot you know about it,” Tom jeered, good-naturedly. “If you’d ever been in love, you’d know it,” he added.
“I suppose so,” Gabrielle agreed, amiably.
“Well, who is it?” asked Tom, curiously. “David, huh?”
Gabrielle felt as if touched by a galvanic shock. There was a choking confusion in all her senses and a scarlet colour in her face as she said:
“David? David is—Sylvia’s.”
“Oh, zat so?” Tom asked, interestedly. “I thought so!” he added, in satisfaction. And with a long half whistle and pursed lips, after a moment of profound thought, when his half-closed eyes were off across the wide seas, he repeated thoughtfully, “Is—that—so? Say, my coming home must have made some difference to them,” he added, suddenly, as Gay did not speak.
“Only in this way,” the girl said, quickly, with one hand quite unconsciously pressed against the pain that was like a physical cut in her heart. “Only in that now he will feel free to ask her, Tom!”
“Sa-a-ay—!” Tom drawled, with a crafty and cunning look of incredulity and sagacity. “He’d hate her with a lot of money tied to her—I don’t think,” he added, good-naturedly. But a moment later a different look, new to him lately, came into his face, and he said more quietly and with conviction: “I don’t know, though. I’ll bet you’re right!”