Page:Dorothy Canfield - Rough-hewn.djvu/482

 "Have you any news from Miss Allen?" asked Neale.

"Oh, no," said Eugenia, slightly surprised. "When she's coming back so soon, she probably doesn't see there's any need to write."

She began on the fish. After the first mouthful she said to Neale with enthusiasm, "You know how to order a dinner as well as to choose a table, that's evident."

"It was the first fish he proposed," said Neale.

Eugenia thought, "How much better breeding he has, after all, than Mr. Livingstone, always boasting of his savoir-faire."

Neale's thoughts were jumping incoherently from one thing to another. "Funny place Rome is, to be planning how to run a woodworking plant in Vermont. Funny change of direction, from planning to go out to China and the East, about-face to planning to settle down and take root. You wouldn't think that would appeal to a man who had had the idea of ranging the world a while longer, to tie himself …" This attempt at reasonable consideration of things vanished in an explosion of emotion, as if a spark had fallen into gunpowder. "Oh, if she will! If she will! Why didn't I make a chance to see her alone before she went away?"

Eugenia was talking about traveling. She had noticed Neale's interest in travels. "I'm thinking, Mr. Crittenden, of making a leisurely trip around the world—not one of those detestable, herded, conducted tours. And yet how else can I go about it? What would you do? I'm so ignorant of anything outside of Europe. I wish I had some one intelligent and enlightened to go with me. It's so forlorn to travel alone!"

"Why, you'll like traveling alone!" said Neale reassuringly, thinking of his own past year. "It's great not to have to bother with some one's else tastes and notions and foolishness and limitations."

"Oh, but," said Eugenia, looking down at her wineglass pensively, "of course it's better to be alone than with some one whose tastes and interests are nothing to you. But to have with you some one you really care for …"

Neale thought suddenly what the past year would have been