Page:The Ivory Tower (London, W. Collins Sons & Co., 1917).djvu/197

THE IVORY TOWER "That would have been helpful of you—but I'm content, dear Davey," she smiled. "We're all devoted to Haughty—but," she added after an instant, "there's just this. Did Mr. Graham while you were there say by chance a word about the likes of me?"

"Well, really, no—our short talk didn't take your direction. That would have been for me, I confess," Davey frankly made bold to add, "a trifle unexpected."

"I see"—Cissy did him the justice. "But that's a little, I think, because you don't know!" It was more, however, than with her sigh she could tell him.

"Don't know by this time, my dear, and after all I've been through," he nevertheless supplied, "what the American girl always so sublimely takes for granted?"

She looked at him on this with intensity—but that of compassion rather than of the conscious wound. "Dear old Davey, il n'y a que vous for not knowing, by this time, as you say, that I've notoriously nothing in common with the creature you mention. I loathe," she said with her purest gentleness, "the American girl."

He faced her an instant more as for a view of the whole incongruity; then he fetched, on his side, a sigh which might have signified, at her choice, either that he was wrong or that he was finally bored. "Well, you do of course brilliantly 183