She smiled without turning to him; watching her, the thought found its way up through the proprieties of his mind that it would be worth waiting a long time if, after the wait, one could go over the hills and far away with a girl through whom life glowed as he could see it glowed in this girl; no, not with a girl like this—boldly, humorously and a little tenderly he amended in his mind—but with this girl.
She wheeled about. "I must go back," she said abruptly. "This dance is with Will Blair—I must go back. I'll have a hard enough time," she laughed, a little nervously, "making it right with Louis Stephens."
"I'll tell him I heard it was an extra," he said.
She halted, looking up at him. "Did you hear that!" she demanded.
He seemed about to say some light thing, but that died away. "I wanted the dance," was his quiet reply.
CHAPTER SEVEN
It was a June evening a year later that Stuart Williams sat on the steps of the porch that ran round the side of his house, humoring the fox terrier who thought human beings existed to throw sticks for dogs. After a while the man grew tired of that theory of human existence, and bade the panting Fritz lie down on the step below him. From there Fritz would look up to his master appealingly, eyes and tail saying, "Now let's begin again." But he got no response, so, in philosophic dog fashion, soon stretched out for a snooze.
The man was less philosophic: he had not that gift of turning from what he wanted to what he could have.
A little later he would go to the rehearsal of the out-of-door play the Country Club was getting ready to give. Ruth Holland would be there: she too was in the play. Probably he would take her home, for they lived in the same neighborhood and a little apart from the others. It was Mrs. Lawrence who, the night of the first rehearsal, commented with relief for one more thing smoothly arranged upon their going the same way.