“About Philena—” She plucked some long blades of grass and began plaiting them into a ring. “How well you look! Lorraine takes good care of you, doesn’t she? Does she look as splendidly?”
“Wish she did—you’ll see her, no doubt.”
“If I stay here. I threatened to move this morning. Some old neighbors came in during my practice hour—they don’t understand!”
“What made you come back,” he asked with a flash of the old boy spirit, “when you never even wrote me!”
“Do you think it was yourself?”
“No. I’m quite removed from you in every way. Why, that dress and ring cost more than Lorraine spends in a year! As Ali Baba says, ‘you are a great lady’—for you wouldn’t have come back unless you were,” he added honestly. “It makes us feel shabby and underdone by contrast.... Of course I never hope to be the same to you—you have everything the world can give you for pleasure and attention. I’m not deluding myself. I’m not such a jay as most of the boys—”
“You never were,” she supplemented quickly.
“I always tried to be ‘citified,’ to wake the town up and keep abreast of the times. Anyway, I loved the finest girl the village ever knew.” There was a quiver in his voice. It was like reopening a newly healed wound and letting it bleed a trifle.
“And you married her,” Thurley insisted, the coquette coming to the surface. She tilted her head to look down at him through half closed, purplish eyes.
“I loved her—and I have a splendid wife,” Dan corrected.