There was a long pause, which a cricket improved to make itself heard above the sweep of the night wind through the tree-tops. Then Ruth said: “I saw Miss Emory to-day. She asked about you.”
Mrs. Joyce and her husband had taken a passionate interest in Oakley's love affair, and divined the utter wreck of his hopes.
“Did she? I saw her at the Rink, too, but of course not to speak with.”
Turner Joyce trod gently but encouragingly on his wife's foot. He felt that Oakley would be none the worse for a little cheer, and he had unbounded faith in his wife's delicacy and tact. She was just the person for such a message.
“She seemed—that is, I gathered from what she said, and it wasn't so much what she said as what she didn't say—”
Dan laughed outright, and Joyce joined in with a panic-stricken chuckle. Ruth was making as bad a botch of the business as he could have made.
“I am not at all sensitive,” said Dan, with sudden candor. “I have admired her immensely; I do still, for the matter of that.”
“Then why don't you go there?”
“I can't, Mrs. Joyce. You know why.”
“But I think she looks at it differently now.”