He was yet
too inexperienced in the ways of the women of the world to even suspect
the depth of resentment that could lie in her tortured heart.

"I'm awfully glad to see you--awfully," he said, committing the blunder
of giving to his voice a note of discreet sympathy. It had been his
distressing duty to bring her personally the little baggage of her
sentimental voyage--letters, a token or two, several photographs--to
witness with clouding eyes the spectacle of her complete breakdown.

She drew a little away at his words, straightening up and looking from
him.

"Have you heard the date of the wedding, Doris's wedding?" she said
coldly.

It was his time to wince, but he was incapable of returning the feminine
attack.

"You should know better than I," he said quietly.

She looked at him with a perfect simulation of ignorance:

"You were rather well interested, weren't you?"

"More than that, as you know, Gladys," he said, looking directly in her
eyes. A certain look she saw there caused her to make a sudden retreat
into banality--

"Do you play?"

"Sometimes."

Miss Stoughton and others impatient of the role of spectators were
organizing tables of auction inside the house. His reason told him that
the best thing for him to do would be to join them and show a certain
indifference, but the longing, miserable and unreasoning, within him to
stay, to be where he could see her, filling his eyes, after all the long
vacant summer, was too strong. He hesitated and remained, saying to
himself--

"Suppose I am a fool. She'll think I haven't the nerve of a mouse."

He wanted to chatter, to laugh at the slightest pretext, to maintain an
attitude of light inconsequential amusement, but the attempt failed. He
remained moody and taciturn, his eyes irresistibly fastened on the young
figure, so free and untamed, reveling in the excitement and hazards of
the game, wondering to himself that this girl, who now seemed so calmly
steeled against the display of the slightest interest in him, had once
swayed against his shoulder, yielding to the enveloping sense of a
moonlight night, loneliness and the invisible, inexplicable impulse
toward each other. What had come to end all this and how was it possible
for her to dissemble the emotion that she must feel, with the knowledge
of his eyes steadily and moodily fixed upon her?

He was resolved to find a moment's isolation in which to speak to her
directly and she just as determined