Page:Mary Rinehart - Man in Lower Ten.djvu/323

 "Blake," he said, if I didn't know you for what you are, I'd say you were interested there yourself."

Being so near her, under the same roof, with even the tie of a dubious secret between us, was making me heady. I pushed Forbes toward the door.

"I interested!" I retorted, holding him by the shoulders. "There isn't a word in your vocabulary to fit my condition. I am an island in a sunlit sea of emotion, Sam, a—an empty place surrounded by longing—a—"

"An empty place surrounded by longing!" he retorted. "You want your dinner, that's what's the matter with you—"

I shut the door on him then. He seemed suddenly sordid. Dinner, I thought! Although, as a matter of fact, I made a very fair meal when, Granger's suit-case not having gone, in his coat and some other man's trousers, I was finally fit for the amenities. Alison did not come down to dinner, so it was clear she would not go over to the club-house dance. I pled my injured arm, and a fictitious, vaguely located sprain from the