“I’m afraid I can’t tell you. I thought that maybe you’d be able to guess.”
“Oh,” she murmured, almost under her breath. Her face grew rosy as an understanding of his meaning came to her and she turned her eyes again to the pansies.
“But I also told him,” John continued with an attempt at nonchalance, wishing to spare her embarrassment, “that that one thing was not at all likely to happen. So—so I’m not disappointed, you see, Miss Ryerson.”
There was a moment of silence. Then:
“But it might.” As soon as the words were uttered she regretted them and arose from her chair in a sudden panic. There was no reply. She wondered what he was thinking, what his face said. The stillness grew and grew. She longed intensely to look around, yet could not have done so had life itself depended upon it. Then, when she had begun to think he was no longer there—
“You mean——?” he asked in low tones that, she thought, trembled a little.
She stared hard at the fluttering blossoms beneath the casement and moistened her lips.
“Why, I mean that if you didn’t expect it to happen, it—it might, mightn’t it?” She gave a little nervous laugh. “You know they say it’s the unexpected that always happens.”
“Oh.... Yes.... I see.” His tone spoke eloquently of disappointment. She was sorry and—yes, disappointed, too. She turned away from the window after a moment and was very glad that the room was so dim; her cheeks were afire.