“Gabrielle,” he said, suddenly, his face reddening and his voice shaking a little, “will you let me tell you what I planned for you and for me?”
She gave him an agonized half glance, nodded, and said some indistinguishable word of assent as she turned away.
“I was wondering——” David began. And suddenly it seemed all to go flat and dull. He felt himself to have no business to be putting it to her this way, this half-laughing, half-sympathetic, wholly kind and comfortable way. The smooth phrases of his imaginings vanished in air, he was merely a rather stupid man of thirty-one, bungling the most delicate thing in all the world. It was too late to stop. The girl’s face was crimson, but she had turned toward him gravely and expectantly, and was looking at him steadily and bravely.
“This was my idea,” David began again, miserably. “I—I felt—I knew that you were most unhappy, and that you felt lonely and as if you were wasting time here, and yet doubtful about making a start elsewhere. And it occurred to me——” He tried his best at this point to recapture the affectionate whimsically practical note that these words had always had in anticipation, but do what he would they sounded stupidly patronizing and heavy. “It occurred to me,” he said again, “that you and I are somewhat in the same boat. We’re Flemings, yet we don’t truly belong at Wastewater—that belongs to Sylvia now! And wouldn’t it be a very delightful thing for you and me to give them all a surprise and just take ourselves out of their way, once and for all?”
She heard him so far. Then she stopped him with a sudden backward movement of her head, and answered quietly, with a downward glance at the puppy’s little snuggled form:
“Thank you, David. But you must see that I can’t—I can’t do that! But thank you very much.”
David was honestly taken aback. Not that he had expected her to fall into his arms—he did not know just what he had expected her to do. But certainly not this! He had perhaps imagined her beautiful and irradiating smile turned toward him, heard a rich cadence half of reproach and half of pleasure in her voice as she said, something like, “David Fleming! Are you asking me to marry you?”
This actuality was all confusing and different from the plan, and his own feelings were disconcertingly different, too. The girl looked unmistakably hurt and humiliated by what he had said, which was astonishing enough. But even more astonishing was his own sudden conviction that she had reason to seem so. What was he saying to her, anyway? After all, her love affair was the most important thing in all a girl’s life! It was not something to be flung at her unexpectedly, between one’s arrival after weeks—after months of absence—and a family dinner!
A half-analyzed consciousness of being wrong, combined with a general confusion of mind and senses, was strong upon David as he blundered on:
“I may be surprising you, Gay. You see, I’ve been thinking about all this for a long time! You can certainly say, ‘This is so sudden,’ in the good old-fashioned manner, if you want to,” added David, nervously, hoping to win back his humorous, comprehending little companion of January with his anxious and appealing laugh.