She saw him coming and shrank vaguely. She felt herself in some subtle way, which she could not define, quite in the wrong. What wrong she could not have told. When, however, she saw that plainly his intention was to speak to her, she smiled at him brilliantly with no trace of embarrassment.
They exchanged the commonplaces of such a meeting.
"Why are you so solemn?" she broke in finally. "You look as if you'd lost your last friend."
He looked at her. "That is the way I feel."
"Oh," said she.
They fell silent. She did not like at all the gloomy fashion of his scrutiny. It made her nervous. She felt creeping on her heart that mysterious heaviness, the weight of something unknowable, which she had lately been at such pains to forget. She did not like it. With an effort, she shook it off and laughed.
"What's the matter?" she cried with forced gayety. "Didn't he sleep well? Don't he like my looks, or the freckle on my nose, or the way I wear my cap?"—she tossed the latter rakishly on her curls, and tilted her head sideways.
"What is the matter?" she asked with a sudden return to gravity.
"You are the matter," he answered briefly.
"Oh dear!" she cried with petulance; "has it come to that?"