"Did you enjoy your vacation?" she asked unexpectedly.
"Very much," he replied, smiling as if in memory. "You know, Mary, there's no use pretending—I've never changed. I found it out when I got abroad. I can't play the hermit. It isn't in me. Over here, with you around, perhaps, I can hold myself in leash. But I am not like you or John, like Americans, at heart. There is something in my blood. I was torn up physically and emotionally when I left, and I had to forget somehow. That isn't an excuse, of course, but it may explain things to you a little. I—I sank into the old rut over there, Mary. The different environment, the different sort of women, the liquor, everything." He flung out his hands hopelessly, in a continental gesture.
"You saw some of your old friends?" she asked quietly.
"Many of them. And they were unchanged too. It was the same old story. I met a girl in Naples whose father had once blackmailed me for an affair with her—and now I suppose he'll be blackmailing me over again. In London, I ran across Sophie Binner. You remember Sophie? We became quite good friends again. She seems to be my sort. I'm what you called me—a coward." He sighed, and watched her face.
But her face, strangely enough, did not flinch. She asked him in the same quiet voice, "You are trying to tell me that you are the same man you were that first day here, when you tried to play sheik with me, flirted with me?"
He shrugged his shoulders.
"I shouldn't think you would have come back here—after playing fast and loose all over Europe, after betraying the trust John and I put in you."
"I came in response to your letter," he said with some dignity.
"Nevertheless, you shouldn't have come in that case. You should have stayed with your—friends."
"I know. You are right," he said. "And I am going back to—them. I booked my passage this morning. I am sailing in a week for Italy, and this time I am not coming back."