"it isn't. I want to talk to you."

I sat down facing her in the chair that Dawson Cooper had occupied.
"Just now," she said, "when you and Lucy went outside, I heard someone
say to someone else----"

"Hadn't they any names?"

"No. She said to him, 'It's about time John Fulton came back. Lucy's
making a fool of herself.'"

Somehow I seemed to turn all cold inside.

"Of course," said Evelyn, "Lucy knows and you know and I know, but the
man in the street who sees you ride out together day after day, and the
woman who's no particular friend of yours, who sees you dance dance
after dance together--_they_ don't know. Aiken is a small place, but
like the night, it has a thousand eyes, and as many idle tongues. If I
didn't know Lucy so well, and you so well, I'd be a little worried."

"Why," I said, "it's a golf year. Nobody would rather ride, except
Lucy and me."

"The reason doesn't matter," said Evelyn. "When two young people are
together a whole lot, their feelings don't stand still. They either
get to like each other less and less, or more and more. You and Lucy
don't like each other less and less. Anybody can see that, so it must
be more and more. And there's always danger in that. Isn't there?"

I thought for a moment, and then said: "Not for her, certainly."

"You knew Lucy when she was a little girl, but you didn't see her often
when she was growing up, did you? Her best friend never thought that
she would ever settle to any one man. She was the most outrageous
little flirt you ever saw. No, not outrageous, because each time she
thought she was really in love herself. It was one boy after another,
all crazy about her, and she about them. Then it was one man after
another. What Lucy doesn't know about moonlight and verandas, and the
sad sounds of the sea at night, isn't worth knowing. But all the time,
from the time she was fifteen, there was John Fulton in the background.
He was never first favorite till she actually accepted him and married
him, but he was always in the running, in second or third place, and
whether he won her down by faithfulness and devotion nobody knows.
Nobody quite knows how or why she changed toward him. I don't believe
she does. He was just about the last man anybody thought she'd marry.
But anyway her young and flighty affections got round to him at last,
and fastened to him. They fastened to him like leeches. No man was
ever loved as hard as she loved him wh