Page:Stanwood Pier--The ancient grudge.djvu/190

179 "Thank you, I'll be delighted," Floyd said, while she stood looking at him helpless and laughing.

"We'll tell you all about our travels—and you'll tell us all the gossip about everybody here.—Stewart, I'll turn on you in just about five seconds."

"Then I'd better be going," said Floyd. He put out his hand, and just as she was about to take it, Stewart jerked back her arm, and twice repeated this, until Floyd made a dive forward and seized the hand; and then Stewart let her go, laughing.

"Of course you know what he is, having roomed with him," Lydia said to Floyd. "Don't be surprised if you hear he has taken to wife-beating next."

Floyd went out of the room with a queer little pang; he would almost rather have had Lydia show some self-consciousness, some awkwardness in the recollection of their last meeting. "She's so happy she's forgotten all about it," he thought. "Well, that's as it should be, I suppose." But all that morning the picture of her and Stewart kept intruding itself before his mind, interfering with his work, making him restless and discontented. He tried to think it was only because of his return from a vacation that he could not at once concentrate his thoughts.

Floyd dined at the Dunbars' often, and always he found Lydia frank and unconstrained; he wondered if she would be so should he some time find her alone. One afternoon, calling on her, he tested this—with some little discomfort to himself; for to be alone with her filled him now, as it had done three years before, with the sense of the inadequacy and imperfection of his momentary happiness. He knew that she was untroubled by any memory; her friendliness was spontaneous and free. Instinctively he felt that in her married security she had not only quite dismissed the thought of the declaration he had once made, but had even taken it for granted that his love had not survived her marriage. There was an innocence in this attitude and in her straightforward treatment of him that