"Lucky me! And poor disappointed prince! I can see him, in a green velvet suit, with a long, dejected feather in his drooping cap, waiting around the corner of your imagination for you to give a glance in his direction. That's all that would be necessary to bring him to life. Instead of that, you are wasting your thoughts--wasting them according to his notion, of course, not mine!--on a chap who is already alive!"
She smiled perforce at my foolery, but her smile was a trifle tremulous. I felt a trouble back of it, that must be treated respectfully.
"Is there anything the matter, Miss Jean?" I asked.
"There's Gene!" she said, a little reproachfully. Her eyes searched mine.
"Oh, I know! Of course! But there isn't anything new?"
She hesitated the barest moment. "That's enough," she breathed.
"But that is coming out all right!" I said reassuringly.
She turned her questioning eyes upon me again, and her look went deeper than ever before. It suddenly struck me that I was foolish to insist upon regarding and treating her as a child. Her eyes were unfathomable, but the mystery that veiled them belonged to womanhood, rather than to childhood.
"Do you say that just to keep me from fretting," she asked gravely, "or do you really know anything that is going to save Gene? Really and truly clear him and--and give him back to me?"
The seriousness and maturity of her manner had so impressed me--I was on the point of saying "had so imposed on me," and I don't know but what that would be the right word--that I took the hazard of answering her with the bare and simple truth.