He shrugged the broad shoulders deprecatingly, as though to suggest that not to know Miss Proctor as an artist argues oneself unknown.
Griswold pretended to be puzzled. As though endeavoring to recall a past conversation he frowned.
"But Aline," he said, "told me she had met you-met you at Bar Harbor." In the fatal photographs the familiar landfalls of Bar Harbor had been easily recognized.
The young architect shook his head.
"It must be another Cochran," he suggested. "I have never been in Bar Harbor."
With the evidence of the photographs before him this last statement was a verdict of guilty, and Griswold, not with the idea of giving Cochran a last chance to be honest, but to cause him to dig the pit still deeper, continued to lead him on. "Maybe she meant York Harbor?"
Again Cochran shook his head and laughed.
"Believe me," he said, "if I'd ever met Miss Proctor anywhere I wouldn't forget it!"
Ten minutes later Griswold was talking to Aline over the telephone. He intended to force matters. He would show Aline she could neither trifle with nor deceive Chester Griswold; but the thought that he had been deceived was not what most hurt him. What hurt him was to think that Aline had preferred a man who looked like an advertisement for ready-made clothes and who worked in his shirt-sleeves.
Griswold took it for granted that any woman would be glad to marry him. So many had been willing to do so that he was convinced, when one of them was not, it was not because there was anything wrong with him, but because the girl herself lacked taste and perception.