At this Jack Landis burst into an enormous laughter.
"You don't mean, Lou, that you actually intend to stay on?"
"What else can I mean?"
"Of course it makes it awkward if the colonel didn't expressly tell you just what to do. I suppose he left it to my discretion, and I decide definitely that you must go back at once."
"I can't do it."
"Lou, don't you hear me saying that I'll take the responsibility? If your father blames you let him tell me—"
He broke down in the middle of his sentence and another of those uncomfortable little pauses ensued. Donnegan knew that their eyes were miserably upon each other; the man tongue-tied by his guilt; the girl wretchedly guessing at the things which lay behind her fiancé's words.
"I'm sorry you don't want me here."
"It isn't that, but—"
He apparently expected to be interrupted, but she waited coolly for him to finish the sentence, and, of course, he could not. After all, for a helpless girl she had a devilish effective way of muzzling Landis. Donnegan chuckled softly in admiration.