“You know I didn’t mean that, it’s because——”
“Don’t begin becausing! You know you’re in a tight corner; you hint that I’ve given you a bad evening just by sitting beside you at a concert—and a very beautiful concert at that.”
“The mistake is mine! You haven’t the slightest respect for my feelings. I show you the wounds in my very soul and you laugh at them.”
“I certainly am not going to weep my eyes out merely because you let a few bars of music throw you. I had a fit of the blues too; several times I thought I was going to cry. How embarrassed you’d have been!”
“No; I should have held your hand until you regained your composure!”
“Then we’d both have been led out by the ushers!”
He joined with her in playing whimsically upon all the possibilities of their ejection. They would have been arrested for disturbing a public gathering and their names would have figured in the police reports, probably with pictorial embellishments. This sort of fooling was safe; she thought perhaps he meant to maintain the talk on an impersonal plane but in a moment he said:
“I’m going away tomorrow, first home to Pittsburgh for about a week; then to New York. I may not get back here for two or three weeks; I’m mixed up in some things that I can’t neglect. I’d like to think you’ll miss me!”
“Oh, I always miss my friends when they go away,” she replied. Then realizing the banality of this she laughed and added: “How silly that sounded!”
“Then you mean you wouldn’t miss me?”