“You two are always talking about things I don’t understand!” Leila said to them; and led Bruce on through the conservatories, talking in her inconsequential fashion.
When they returned to the house someone had begun playing old-fashioned games—blindman’s buff, drop the handkerchief and London Bridge. When these ceased to amuse, the rugs were cleared away and they danced to the phonograph. Mills encouraged and participated in all this as if anxious to show that he could be as young as the youngest. And what occasion could be more fitting than an evening in his handsome country house, with his children and their friends about him!
With Millicent constantly before his eyes, entering zestfully into all these pleasures, Bruce recovered his tranquillity. For the thousandth time he convinced himself that he was not a weakling to suffer specters of the past and forebodings of the future to mar his life. He danced with Millicent; seized odd moments in which to talk to her; tried to believe that she had a particular smile for him....
“I wonder if you’d drive me in?” asked Mrs. Torrence when the party began to break up.
“I’d been counting on it!” said Bruce promptly.
Constance came along and waived her rights to his escort, as she and Shepherd were taking the Freemans home.
“I believe we’re a little better acquainted than we were,” she said meaningfully.
“It seemed to me we made a little headway,” Bruce replied.
“Come and see me soon! You never can tell when I’ll need a little consoling.”
“That was a good party,” Mrs. Torrence began as Bruce got his car in motion. “Mr. Mills is two or three different men. Sometimes I think he consciously assumes a variety of rôles. He’s keen about this country gentleman stuff—unassuming grandeur and all that! But meet him out at dinner in town tomorrow night and you’d never think him capable of playing drop the handkerchief! Makes you wonder just which is the real Mills.”