Page:Claire Ambler (1928).djvu/31

 "I knew you'd feel that way," Nelson said in a low voice. "I knew you would." Then, emotional after the confirmation of this affinity between them, he walked on in silence, believing that she shared his feeling.

But here he pathetically failed in comprehension of his new friend. Claire was wondering which of two dresses she would wear that evening to a dance at the Beach Club; all the way from Nelson's cottage, she had been trying to decide between them; she was only secondarily aware of Nelson, though she had seemed to be giving him a stirred attention. Her share of the conversation had been not much more than the repetition of a familiar formula, yet he found it anything but mechanical. For in this she was exercising an art possessed and habitually practised by most of her sex. Nelson's own mother used a variation of it frequently, at breakfast, when she gave a perfect response to her husband's discourse without listening to it or disturbing in the least the housewifely planning that then always occupied her mind.

Without speaking again, the two young people reached the driveway gate of the house Claire's father had leased for the summer; and here they paused. "Well" Nelson said, a little huskily, for his emo-