“It doesn't mean anything, that sort of fooling.”
“You and I may know that. The girl may not.”
Then he went out, and Graham returned unhappily to the inner room. Anna was not crying; she was too frightened to cry. She had sat without moving, her hand still clutching her untouched sandwich. Graham looked at her and tried to smile.
“I'm gone, I suppose?”
“Don't you worry about that,” he said, with boyish bravado. “Don't you worry about that, little girl.”
“Father will kill me,” she whispered. “He's queer these days, and if I go home and have to tell him—” She shuddered.
“I'll see you get something else, if the worst comes, you know.”
She glanced up at him with that look of dog-like fidelity that always touched him.
“I'll find you something good,” he promised.
“Something good,” she repeated, with sudden bitterness. “And you'll get another girl here, and flirt with her, and make her crazy about you, and—”