Page:Glitter (1926).pdf/139

 see you." Then, quick as the closing of a door on a lighted room, the gladness went out of his face again.

"What's the trouble, Brad?" Eunice asked. "Are you sick?" Jock could have slain her for the way she asked it. Matter-of-factly, and with a trace of irritation.

"No, just tired," said Brad. He crossed to the davenport and slumped down. "Had a—bad evening," he appended, low.

Eunice echoed him. "Bad evenin'? Well, what kind of an evenin' do you think I had, sittin' all alone heah wonderin' if you'd smashed into a tree, or what? I stood it as long as I could and then I called Jock and made him come ovah. You said you'd be heah at nine, Brad! And it's almost two!"

"I know," said Brad. "I'm sorry. I was detained."

"Wheah were you?"

(Oh, that hunted, haunted look! Those inanimate hands! Those eyes. . . . )

"Just—out," Brad answered vaguely. "Out seeing a—a man"

"A man!" Eunice made a little dagger of the word, and plunged it in and twisted it, so that Brad writhed. "A man! It was some woman"

Jock got to his feet. "You—shut—up!" he commanded. Then, as Eunice turned to him, stunned, he said more calmly, "I beg your pardon. It's none of my affair, of course, but I couldn't sit here and hear you ride Brad like that. Don't you see he's ill, Eunice? He's not himself."

"I'm just tired," Brad repeated. "It's all right, Jock. Eunice doesn't mean anything."

Then Jock felt foolish, He saw himself as a third party who had butted unasked into a domestic argu-