Page:The Breath of Scandal (1922).djvu/195

 Gregg wondered; what would have been said, if he had not surprised Rinderfeld in that off-guard moment before the Hales' home? "Smooth!" Gregg said to himself. "The smoothest proposition I ever saw. He has her coming to him; he's going to keep her coming to him! Europe! He knows she's not going to Europe; but she thinks he wants to send her away; thinks he doesn't want to see her, except when necessary on business. And he's all her affairs right in his hand—well, that was my big idea; I got him for her because I knew he was the smoothest proposition in Chicago."

He looked down at Marjorie who, thus deserted by Rinderfeld, seemed at a loss what to do.

"You want to go home?" Gregg asked her, expressionlessly.

"No."

"You really want to walk?"

"Please!"

He hesitated and then he clasped her arm as they started.

"You've no idea what a relief it is to have you come, Gregg," she said, as though just now able to appreciate his arrival. "Being with other people is like—well, suppose you and Billy and I had been to the war a few years ago and come back to people who hadn't heard of it and didn't even know anything had happened. That's what being with other people is like for me these days, Gregg. I can't talk to them about anything which seems real or get anything from them which means a snap of fingers to me."

Her voice wavered up and down in her difficulty of controlling it; and he noticed now how it had altered in quality, too; more of the woman's voice than Marjorie's ought to be; and the wretchedness in it struck