“I’m going to ask you such an impertinent question,” he said, “that I must first light a cigarette. If you will strike a match for me....” His one arm made striking safety-matches just a bit of business; he traded on it sometimes.
She struck one, laughing at him.
“You aren’t surely going to ask me not to go, Ivor Marlay! That wouldn’t come very well from a man who has simply refused to come near me for—how many years? Seven or eight, I think.”
“That’s exactly what I am going to ask you, Lois,” he said earnestly. “I’m hoping you will understand. Can’t I really tempt you to stay a few days longer?” The question was light, but the manner earnest enough. But that Lois appreciated its earnestness was evident only in her glance, for she laughed—the laugh with which she turned things away, a gay laugh, the Lois laugh. (All these people had each their own particular laugh; thus, it was fun to imitate each other’s.) She understood very well why the question was “impertinent.” She knew he was asking her what Virginia, however much she wanted her to stay on, would never ask her—he was asking her not to leave Virginia stranded. It was certainly “impertinent.”
As Lois had said she was going, Ivor had had a sudden vision of Virginia stranded in that galère, Virginia deserted by her friend rather shamefully. But, with these people, where did friendship begin and where end?
“No, really. I’m so afraid I can’t,” she said sincerely; and added: “Johnny would be ever so disappointed at putting it off now!”
“Virginia will be disappointed the other way,” Ivor just pointed out, bluntly.
They continued their leisurely walk in silence. Then Lois turned her head to him.
“Virginia, you know, makes everything all right by not noticing things. And she has no need of friends—I assure you, Ivor Marlay! She works things out for herself and by herself.”
Does she? Ivor grimly wondered to himself.