The dean chuckled.
“The trouble with your mother’s quotations, my dear, is that she gets them misapplied. What do you think of it, Fan? You know Faunce better than we do.”
Fanny was looking intently out of the window at the buds of the yellow rose.
“I don’t think I do know him very well, papa. You see, he was so much in love with Diane that he talked about her more than anything else. I felt, after a while, as if I stood on the outer edge. You understand, don’t you? It was as if I knew him quite well as my friend, but his real inner self, his soul, was a long way off. I—I thought it was because he was in love with—with some one else.”
The dean mused.
“I’m not so sure, my child. I think that was the way he made most of us feel—as if his soul was a long way off, as if he had something on his mind. Perhaps Diane has just found out what it is, and it’s given her a shock.”
Fanny started, turning her blue eyes on him.
“You mean you think he’s done something wrong?”
“I don’t think I meant anything as concrete as that, Fan. I was thinking that the inner self of some men is a shock to the average woman. That’s why we get these surprises, my dear. We don’t know people as they are, and when we find out their hidden characteristics we sometimes get a jar. It takes time to settle down and find that we can’t make the world over to suit our own ideas. Diane’s a bit headstrong; she’ll take it hard.”
“I don’t think she cared much for him, papa. She—she was in love with Overton before he went away.”