“Well, it was not a good thing,” I conceded. “While we are on the subject of losing things, do you remember—do you know that I still have your gold purse?”
She did not reply at once. The shadow of a column was over her face, but I guessed that she was staring at me.
“You have it!” She almost whispered.
“I picked it up in the street car,” I said, with a cheerfulness I did not feel. “It looks like a very opulent little purse.”
Why didn’t she speak about the necklace? For just a careless word to make me sane again!
“You!” she repeated, horror-stricken. And then I produced the purse and held it out on my palm. “I should have sent it to you before, I suppose, but, as you know, I have been laid up since the wreck.”
We both saw McKnight at the same moment. He had pulled the curtains aside and was standing looking out at us. The tableau of give and take was unmistakable; the gold purse, her outstretched hand, my own attitude. It was over in a second; then he came out and lounged on the balcony railing.
“They’re mad at me in there,” he said airily, “so I came out. I suppose the reason they call it bridge is because so many people get cross over it.”
The heat broke up the card group soon after, and they all came out for the night breeze. I had no more words alone with Alison.
I went back to the Incubator for the night. We said almost nothing on the way home; there was a constraint between us for the first time that I could remember. It was too early for bed, and so we smoked in the living-room and tried to talk of trivial things. After a time even those failed, and we sat silent. It was McKnight who finally broached the subject.