“Of course I do,” Mills answered with a broad smile.
She made it necessary for Bruce to assist her in combating Mills’s hopeless view of the future, though she bore the main burden of the opposition herself. Mills’s manner was one of good-natured indulgence; but Bruce was wondering whether there was not a deep vein of cynicism in the man. Mills was clever at fencing, and some of the things he said lightly no doubt expressed real convictions.
Bruce was about to take his leave when Mills with assumed petulance declared that the fire had been neglected and began poking the embers. Carefully putting the poker and tongs back in the rack, he lounged toward the door, paused halfway and said good-night formally, bowing first to one and then the other.
“Come in again sometime!” Millicent called after him.
“Is that impudence?” Mills replied, reappearing from the hall with his coat and hat. In a moment the door closed and they heard the sound of his stick on the walk outside.
“He’s always like that,” Millicent remarked after a moment of silence. “It’s understood that he may come in when I’m playing and leave when he pleases. Sometimes when I’m at the organ he sits for an hour without my knowing he’s here. It made me nervous at first—just remembering that he might be here; but I got over that when I found that he really enjoyed the playing. I’m sorry he didn’t stay longer and really talk; he wasn’t at his best tonight.”
Bruce made the merest murmur of assent, but something in Mills’s quizzical, mocking tone, the very manner of his entrance into the house, affected him disagreeably.
He realized that he was staying too long for a first call, but he lingered until they had regained the cheery note with which the evening began, and said good night.
II
When he reached the street Bruce decided to walk the mile that lay between the Hardens’ and his apartment. His second meeting with Franklin Mills had left his mind in tumult. He was again beset by an impulse to flee from the town, but this he fought and vanquished.