Marie looked amazed.
“But we all thought–––” she said, then stopped, remembering that Micky and Raymond had been great friends. “I hope he’ll be happy,” she said lamely.
Micky laughed shortly.
“I don’t,” he said. “He doesn’t deserve to be.”
She made no comment.
There was an excited flush in her cheeks, and a nervous note in her voice when she spoke; it was like old times 146 to be here with him again, until she met his eyes across the little table, and then it seemed as if she were looking into the face of a stranger, a man who was like Micky––enough like him to hurt, and yet not Micky at all.
She aroused herself to amuse him. Micky had always told her she cheered him up in the old days, but this afternoon he answered her in monosyllables, and she saw with bitter mortification how often he looked at the clock. At last she was driven to remark on it.
“Micky, are you in a hurry to get away?”
She asked the question lightly, but there was a strained note in her voice.
Micky did not look at her.