She wasn’t sure that she wanted to make it impossible for him to see her again or that she really preferred that he tell his troubles to his wife. His troubles were always largely imaginary, due to his sensitive and impressionable nature.
“You needn’t remind me of that!” he said.
“Oh, start the car! Let’s all be cheerful! We might as well laugh as cry in this world. Did you see the game Saturday? I had a suitor turn up from the university and we had a jolly time.”
“Who was he?” Bob demanded savagely.
“Oh, Bob, you’re a perfect scream! Well, you needn’t be jealous of him.”
“I’m jealous of every man you know!” he said.
“Now, you’re talking like a crazy man! Suppose I were to tell you I’m jealous of Evelyn! Please remember that you forgot all about me and married another girl quite cheerfully with a church wedding and flowers and everything. You needn’t come to me now for consolation!”
She refused to hear his defense from this charge, and mocked him by singing snatches of college songs till they were in town. When they reached the Durland house she told him not to get out.
“I won’t tell the family you brought me home; they wouldn’t understand. Thanks ever so much, Bob.”
Mrs. Durland and Ethel were waiting to hear of her evening with Miss Reynolds and she told everything except that she had met Cummings there. She satisfied as quickly as possible their curiosity as to Miss Reynolds and her establishment, and hurried to her room eager to be alone. She assured herself that she could never love Bob Cummings, would never have loved him even if their families had remained neighbors and it had been possible to marry him. He wasn’t her type—the phrase pleased her—and in trying to determine just what type of man most appealed to her Trenton loomed large in her speculations. Within a few weeks she had encountered two concrete instances of the instability of marriage. Love, it seemed, was a fleeting thing and loyalty had become a by-word. Bob was only a spoiled boy, shallow, easily influenced, yet withal endowed with graces and charms. But graces and charms were not enough. She brought herself to the point of feeling sorry for Evelyn, who probably refused to humor and pet Bob and was doubtless grateful that he had music as an outlet for his emotions. It was something, though, to have found that he hadn’t forgotten; that there were times when he felt the need of her. She wondered whether he would take her word as final and make no further attempt to see her.