'Do you write?'
'Why—oh no! But I've wished I could. I've tried a little.'
So far as words went they might as well have been mentioning the weather. It was not an occasion in which words had any real part. He saw, felt, the presence of a girl unlike any he had known—slimly pretty, alive with a quick eager interest, and subtly friendly. She saw, and felt, a white tragic face out of which peered eyes with a gloomy fire in them.
Before Alfred Knight drifted back she asked him to call. Then, at the sight of them, Alfred drifted away again.
'Perhaps,' she added shyly, 'you'd bring some of your stories.'
'I haven't anything I could bring,' he replied, still with that burning look. 'Nothing 'that's any good. If I had...' Then this blazed from him in a low shaky voice: 'You haven't heard what they're saying about me. I can see that. If you had you wouldn't ask me to call.'
'Oh, I'm sure I would,' she murmured, greatly confused.
'You wouldn't. You really couldn't. But I want to say this—quick, before they come!'—for he saw Mary Ames in the doorway—'I've got to say it! They'll tell you something about me. Something dreadful. It isn't true. It—is—not true!'
'She isn't in there,' said Mary, joining them. Then 'Oh!' She looked at Henry with a hint of alarm in her face; said, 'How do you do!' in a voice that chilled him, brought the despair back; then said to Cicely, ignoring him: 'We'd better tell them.' And moved a step toward the group under the lanterns.
Cicely hesitated.