"Desperate flirting or earnest love-making, I wish I knew which."
"I wish I could tell you really, Mr. Dalton, but you seem to know more about the matter already than I do."
"I cannot help it Amey," he said in a muffled tone, then looking up. "It promises to be a stormy night," he added in an entirely new voice.
"I am afraid so" I answered, standing before our own gate. "Will you come in for a moment?"
"Thank you, I have an engagement, good afternoon."
"Good afternoon."
He raised his hat and turned away and I passed into the house filled with the strangest emotions I had ever known. I went straight to my own room and threw myself into a capacious easy-chair near the fire. The gray shadows of the early winter evening were just touching everything around me. I was in an excited mood and for what? A new suspicion had suddenly thrust itself in between me and a happy, satisfying conviction which I had cherished of late. The reader will not question whether there is one thing in life more annoying or more discouraging than to see one's settled belief in anything suddenly uprooted and tossed about by unexpected yet not unpleasant circumstances. Some small whispering voice from the farthest depths of my heart struggled to the surface now and asked me plainly and brusquely to come to an understanding with my inner self once for all, instead of leaning in this half-decided way, now towards one conviction, now towards another.
"I cannot help it, Amey." What was he going to say? What did he think? Why did he stop there? "Desperate flirtation, or earnest love-making. I wish I knew which." Queer thing to say, that. But what a queer man he was! What did it matter to him which it was? Did he mean to allude to Arthur Campbell and me, or was he perhaps thinking of himself and somebody? Why did I dismiss him summarily? If I had urged him to come in he would have consented, and we might have talked it out. We each thought a great deal more than we said, but after all, maybe it was well as it stood. What could he ever be to me more than an old friend—twice my age—and maybe I was too precipitate and presumptuous. How did I know he thought of me in any other light than the child he had always known me? I stood up with this impediment thrown voluntarily in the way, and took off my street apparel. In a quarter of an hour later dinner was served, and I went down cheerfully to the dining-room.