There was a good deal of flirting going on among young married people, Bruce found, but it was of a harmless sort. Towns of two and three hundred thousand are too small for flirtations that pass the heavily mined frontiers of discretion. Even though he had weakly yielded to an impulse and kissed Connie the night he drove her from the Freemans’ to Deer Trail, he took it for granted that it had meant no more to her than it had to him. And he assumed that on the earlier afternoon, when he met Connie and Whitford on the road, Whitford had probably been making love to Connie and Connie had not been unwilling to be made love to. There were women like that, he knew, not infrequently young married women who, when the first ardor of marriage has passed, seek to prolong their youth by re-testing their charm for men. Shepherd Mills was hardly a man to inspire a deep love in a woman of Connie’s temperament; it was inevitable that Connie should have her little fling.
On his way home from one of his afternoon tramps Bruce was moved to make his third call at the Shepherd Mills’s. It was not Connie’s day at home, but she had asked him to dinner a few nights earlier when it was impossible for him to go and he hadn’t been sure that she had accepted his refusal in good part. He was cold and tired—happily tired, for the afternoon spent in the wintry air had brought the solution of several difficult questions touching the Laconia memorial. His spirit had won the elation which workers in all the arts experience when hazy ideas begin to emerge into the foreground of consciousness and invite consideration in terms of the tangible and concrete.
He would have stopped at the Hardens’ if he had dared; lights shone invitingly from the windows as he passed, but the Mills house, with its less genial façade, deterred him. The thought of Millicent was inseparable from the thought of Mills....
He hadn’t realized that it was so late until he had rung the bell and looked at his watch under the entry light. The maid surveyed him doubtfully, and sounds of lively talk from within gave him pause. He was about to turn away when Constance came into the hall.
“Oh, pleasantest of surprises!” she exclaimed. “Certainly you’re coming in! There’s no one here but old friends—and you’ll make another!”
“If it’s a party, I’m on my way,” he said hesitatingly.
“Oh, it’s just Nellie Burton and George Whitford—nothing at all to be afraid of!”
At this moment Mrs. Burton and Whitford exhibited themselves at the living-room door in proof of her statement.
“Bully!” cried Whitford. “Of course Connie knew you were coming!”
“I swear I didn’t!” Constance declared.