“Yes. But it was talk.”
“Oh, boo! Don’t be so serious.”
“Weren’t you?”
“Of course not. I was speaking the truth. Even, I was prophesying. To be serious at such a game is to risk being a fool.”
“Most of your talk, Tom, is a side-stepping of something in you you want to hide. I have noticed that.”
Cornelia was half up on her couch, facing him straight. Now, she was ready to pin him. “It’s a bad convenience, dear,” she went on, “putting up all these brittle outer observations when some one threatens to get under your skin. You do it so well.”
She smiled; Tom straightened his legs and met her gaze. He knew her direction. “You wouldn’t understand,” he said.
“Why? Just because you don’t?”
This was a true shot. He acknowledged it.
“Very well,” he spoke dryly. “There was a boy—a mere boy—up there. From New England. For some curious reason he upset me. I don’t like to talk about him. I do want to see him again. It’s all rather odd because he was really quite dull. We had damn little to say.”