“He looks that sort of man,” he said.
And, as he said it, the accumulated boredom of the past three hours found vent in a vast yawn.
Ruth set her teeth. She felt as if she had received a blow.
When he spoke again it was on the subject of street-paving defects in New York City.
It was true, as Ruth had said, that they did not dine with the Baileys every night, but that seemed to Kirk, as the days went on, the one and only bright spot in the new state of affairs. He could not bring himself to treat life with a philosophical resignation. His was not open revolt. He was outwardly docile, but inwardly he rebelled furiously.
Perhaps the unnaturally secluded life which he had led since his marriage had unfitted him for mixing in society even more than nature had done. He had grown out of the habit of mixing. Crowds irritated him. He hated doing the same thing at the same time as a hundred other people.
Like most Bohemians, he was at his best in a small circle. He liked his friends as single spies, not in battalions. He was a man who should have had a few intimates and no acquaintances; and his present life was bounded north, south, east, and west by acquaintances. Most of the men to whom he spoke he did not even know by name.
He would seek information from Ruth as they drove home.
“Who was the pop-eyed second-story man with the bald head and the convex waistcoat who glued himself to me to-night?”