“Our best things are nearest to us, close about our feet,” she answered.
He did not reply. Ralph Towne never replied unless he chose.
He opened his watch; he had been with her exactly ten minutes.
“I have an engagement at six,” he said.
The flexible lips stiffened. “Do not let me detain you.”
He was regarding her with a smile in his eyes that she could not interpret; her graceful head was thrown back against the mass of fluffy white upon the chair, the white softening the outlines of a face that surely needed not softening; the clear, unshrinking eyes meeting his with all her truth in them; the blue ribbon at her throat, the gray cashmere falling around her, touched him with a sense of fitness; the slight hands clasping each other in her lap, slight even with their strength, partly annoyed, partly baffled him. Mr. Hammerton had told her that she had wilful hands.
Regarding Tessa Wadsworth as regarding some other things, Ralph Towne thought because he felt; he could not think any further than he thought to-day, because he had not felt any further.
There was another friend in her life who with Tessa Wadsworth as with some other things felt because he thought, and he could not feel any further than he felt to-day because he had not thought any further.
For the first time since she had known Ralph Towne, she was wishing that he were like Gus Hammerton. It had never occurred to her before to wish that he would change.
Each smiled under the survey. He was thinking, “I wish I loved you.” She was thinking, “You are a dear, big boy; I wish you were more manly.”