“Once. Just as we were coming out of the convention. He said something about you to a group of men which called my attention to him.” Miss De Voe thought Peter would ask her what it was. “Would you like to know what he said?” she asked, when Peter failed to do so.
“I think he would have said it to me, if he wished me to hear it.”
Miss De Voe’s mind reverted to her criticism of Peter. “He is so absolutely without our standards.” Her chair suddenly ceased to be comfortable. She rose, saying, “Let us go to the library. I shall not show you my pictures now. The gallery is too big to be pleasant such a night. You must come again for that. Won’t you tell me about some of the other men you are meeting in politics?” she asked when they had sat down before another open fire. “It seems as if all the people I know are just alike—I suppose it’s because we are all so conventional—and I am very much interested in hearing about other kinds.”
So Peter told about Dennis and Blunkers, and the “b’ys” in the saloons; about Green and his fellow delegates; about the Honorable Mr., Mrs., and Miss Gallagher, and their dinner companions. He did not satirize in the least. He merely told various incidents and conversations, in a sober, serious way; but Miss De Voe was quietly amused by much of the narrative and said to herself, “I think he has humor, but is too serious-minded to yield to it.” She must have enjoyed his talk for she would not let Peter go early, and he was still too ignorant of social usages to know how to get away, whether a woman wished or no. Finally he insisted that he must leave when the clock pointed dangerously near eleven.
“Mr. Stirling,” said Miss De Voe, in a doubtful, “won’t-you-please” voice, such as few men had ever heard from her, “I want you to let me send you home? It will only take a moment to have the carriage here.”
“I wouldn’t take a horse out in such weather,” said Peter, in a very settling kind of voice.
“He’s obstinate,” thought Miss De Voe. “And he makes his obstinacy so dreadfully—dreadfully pronounced!” Aloud she said: “You will come again?”
“If you will let me.”
“Do. I am very much alone too, as perhaps you know?” Miss De Voe did not choose to say that her rooms could be filled nightly and that everywhere she was welcome.
“No. I really know nothing about you, except what you have told me, and what I have seen.”