Page:The Soft Side (New York, The Macmillan Company, 1900).djvu/224

216 And her eyes, as she named him, waited, to my surprise, for my answer.

I couldn't quite see why she returned to him, so that my answer was rather lame. 'Don't ask me too many things; else there are some I shall have to ask.'

She continued to look at me; after which she turned away. 'Then I won't—for I don't understand him.' She turned away, I say, but the next moment had faced about with a fresh, inconsequent question. 'Then why in the world has he cooled off?'

'About my paper? Has he cooled? Has he shown you that otherwise?' I asked.

'Than by his delay? Yes, by silence—and by worse.'

'What do you call worse?'

'Well, to say of it—and twice over—what he said just now.'

'That it's very "neat"? You don't think it is?' I laughed.

'I don't say it;' and with that she smiled. 'My brother might hear!'

Her tone was such that, while it lingered in the air, it deepened, prolonging the interval, whatever point there was in this; unspoken things therefore had passed between us by the time I at last brought out: 'He hasn't read me! It doesn't matter,' I quickly went on; 'his relation to what I may do or not do is, for his own purposes, quite complete enough without that.'

She seemed struck with this. 'Yes, his relation to almost anything is extraordinary.'

'His relation to everything!' It rose visibly before us and, as we felt, filled the room with its innumerable, indistinguishable objects. 'Oh, it's the making of him!'

She evidently recognised all this, but after a minute she again broke out: 'You say he hasn't read you and that it doesn't matter. But has he read my brother? Doesn't that matter?'