It was on his tongue to pile up additional arguments against the marriage; but this unresisting Leila with her back to the pillar exasperated him. And all those months that they had traveled about together, with never a mention of Thomas; when she had even indulged in mild flirtations with men who became their fellow travelers for a day, she had carried in her heart this determination to marry Thomas. And he, Franklin Mills, had stupidly believed that she was forgetting the man....
He again walked the length of the veranda, and as he retraced his steps she met him by the door.
“Well, Dada, shall we drive in?” she asked, quite as though nothing had happened.
“I suppose we may as well start,” he said and looked at his watch to hide his embarrassment rather than to learn the time.
On the way into town she recurred to incidents of their travels and manifested great interest in changes he proposed making in his conservatories to embrace some ideas he had gathered in England; but she did not refer in any way to Thomas. When they reached home she kissed him good-night and went at once to her room.
The house was stifling from the torrid day and Mills wished himself back at the farm. His chief discomfort was not physical, however; Leila had eluded him, taken refuge in the inconsequential and irrelevant in her own peculiar, capricious fashion. It was not in his nature to discuss his affairs or ask counsel, but he wished there were someone he could talk to.... Millicent might help him in his perplexity. He went out on the lawn and looked across the hedge at the Hardens’, hearing voices and laughter. The mirth was like a mockery.
IV
On the following day Bruce and Millicent drove to the Faraway club for golf. He was unable to detect any signs indicating that Mills’s return had affected Millicent. She spoke of him as she might have spoken of any other neighbor. Bruce wasn’t troubled about Mills when he was with Millicent; it was when he was away from her that he was preyed upon by apprehensions. He could never marry her: but Mills should never marry her. This repeated itself in his mind like a child’s rigamarole. Their game kept them late and it was after six when they left the club in Bruce’s roadster.
Millicent was beside him; their afternoon together had been unusually enjoyable. He had every reason to believe that she preferred his society to that of any other man she knew. He had taken a route into town that was longer than the one usually followed, and in passing through a small village an exclamation from Millicent caused him to stop the car.
“Wasn’t that Leila and Fred at the gas station?” she asked. “Let’s go back and see.”