Constance Bardale got up and left him. “Let him stay alone if that is really what he wants.” She thought in the falseness of a moment’s pique she had been moved to rescue him from a painful solitude among the chatter of others.
As she sat again, talking elsewhere, she had David in mind.
“What is it?” She recovered herself. “Is he a ninny or was he just bored? I don’t think he’s a ninny.” She had intelligence to know, at least, that he had not been frightened. There had been a calm in his sudden withdrawal which was the contrary of fear.
She took his hand at the door, and now when the invitation she had so unconventionally stressed would have been a mere matter of form, she kept silent.
“Good-night, Mr. Markand.”
“Good-night, Miss Bardale.”
He was very serious and far away. She had the wit to smile and turn to the others....
It was a crystal night of autumn. David and Tom could not think of taking a car.
David was sorely troubled. He was glad Tom made no effort to talk. A question from him would have thrown David into panic. It was about Tom he was troubled. And about himself.
“I am afraid. I am afraid to meet a woman flirting with me. I am a coward,” he muttered to himself. Constance Bardale had understood him better. She had glimpsed under his sudden tenacity of refusal to meet her, to meet even her eyes or her laughter, some deeper preoccupation which her profane self must not be allowed to enter. But David walked with a sense of discomfort—wide and profound—as if all life were a garment that fitted him ill. Tom was a mere most sensitive spot where the ungainly garment caught.