That afternoon Miss Whiting was strangely silent. Held at the opening of the tent by her hostess, people passed before her unseen. What she said she hardly knew. What her words meant she could not have told. She was only aware that her voice sounded unnatural, and that her laugh—when laugh she must—struck discordantly and strangely on her ears. She felt that the time would never come when she could be alone—to think.
II.
Mrs. Gunnison’s dinners, like all else of the establishment, were always large. The classic limits authoritatively imposed she would have scorned—if she had ever heard of them. If she could have timed it, the greater the number of minutes required by the procession to the dining room in passing a given point, the better she would have been satisfied. She only felt that she “entertained” when she beheld serried ranks of guests stretching away from her on either hand. Therefore, when Miriam turned and discovered Leeds at her right, they found themselves in such semi-isolation as only exists at a very large dinner table.
“I am sorry,” he said, pleadingly.
“So am I,” she answered. “Very—oh, you think I mean that to be pleasant in that way, too——”
She hastily averted her face, and engaged vigorously in conversation with the man on the other side. Leeds stared moodily before him. During the passing of the many courses which Mrs. Gunnison’s idea of fitting ceremony demanded, the lady whom he had taken in found him neither communicative nor responsive. The dinner dragged on. Miss Whiting’s soft right shoulder remained constantly turned on him. Her discourses, which he could not help hearing, continued actively and unceasingly. At last Mrs. Gunnison darted restless glances about. She had already begun to stir uneasily in her chair.
Miriam suddenly veered round upon him.
“I want to tell you something,” she almost whispered. “What I said—what I tried to say this afternoon was true.”
He looked at her with fixed earnestness.
“Oh!” she cried, passionately. “I can’t bear to have you study me as if I were a specimen of something—of mendacity, you think. But no matter about that. You must believe me. Don’t you?”