“He's not a bit attractive,” Nina was saying. “Quiet, and—well, I don't suppose he knows what he's got on.”
Wallie was watching Elizabeth.
“Oh, I don't know,” he said, with masculine fairness. “He's a good sort, and he's pretty much of a man.”
He was quite sure that the look Elizabeth gave him was grateful.
He went soon after that, keeping up an appearance of gaiety to the end, and very careful to hope that Elizabeth would enjoy the play.
“She's a wonder, they say,” he said from the doorway. “Take two hankies along, for it's got more tears than 'East Lynne' and 'The Old Homestead' put together.”
He went out, holding himself very erect and looking very cheerful until he reached the corner. There however he slumped, and it was a rather despondent young man who stood sometime later, on the center of the deserted bridge over the small river, and surveyed the water with moody eyes.
In the dusky living-room Nina was speaking her mind.
“You treat him like a dog,” she said. “Oh, I know you're civil to him, but if any man looked at me the way Wallie looks at you—I don't know, though,” she added, thoughtfully. “It may be that that is why he is so keen. It may be good tactics. Most girls fall for him with a crash.”
But when she glanced at Elizabeth she saw that she had not heard. Her eyes were fixed on something on the street beyond the window. Nina looked out. With a considerable rattle of loose joints and four extraordinarily worn tires the Livingstone car was going by.