She held on to him hard for comfort even while she was reproaching him.
He looked down at her in the half-light, then, as if he was fairly content with what he saw in her face, closed the door behind him. They could still see each other enough to talk.
"Next time give me a little more benefit of the doubt, my dear. I never told Gail anything!"
When John told you anything it was so. That was all there was to that. She gave a gasp of blessed relief.
"But—" she protested. "But Gail knew——"
He sat down on the step below her.
"But Gail didn't know anything! Gail never will know anything. Nobody ever will but you and I and Phyllis Harrington, who is much safer than a church. But it did take a certain amount of diplomacy to extract from Gail exactly what she said to you that frightened you into another state—or rather what she meant by it."
He was smiling now. Could it possibly be——
"I went to Gail as soon as Phyllis had called me up and had had it out with me—which, I may add, she did rather severely," he went on calmly, though he still held one hand as if he was afraid Joy would vanish again. "And Gail said——"
He stopped provokingly, and Joy held her breath.