“And you could forget me—forget the fifty dollars for nearly a year!”
“I don’t blame you for talking that way. I expect to be misunderstood—not me, but the thing I stand for.”
She was hushed. Could he mean that he suffered in conscious conflict? Could it be that he was aware at all of that imprisoned thing she saw back of his eyes? He had halted, and now she turned again for him to go on.
“I hoped that you, you of all, might understand,” he said. “Why, it was from you that the whole thing started.”
He seemed actually to be making himself believe it. She felt herself trying to give him the benefit of the doubt.
“Do you know you’re changed?” he said, in sudden exultation. “Do you know you’re five times as charming? What’s happened?”
“Nothing has happened,” said Pidge.
“It was the strangest shock, in the restaurant when I saw you. I knew it was you, and yet you’ve put on something—out of the ordinary.”
“Oh, don’t.... I must go back to the office now.”
“The bank is just half a block. We’ve been walking in circles. I hadn’t a check in my pocket.... I wanted to walk with you anyway. Do you really have to get back to the office?”