“I might as well own up, Miss Gail,” he said to her suddenly. “I’m
still mad.”
“At me?”
“At you. For a while I was so mad that I didn’t want to see you or
think of you,” he admitted with the frankness which had enabled him
to ask her, directly, how she happened to be at Mrs. Corliss’. “But
that didn’t seem to do me any good. So I called up your hotel----”
“You did? When?”
“After you were gone--about two days after. They had no address for
you and Hub had none. I asked him.”
Ruth trembled with joyous excitement.
“I wanted to tell you better what I meant,” he went on. “And to find
out more from you.”
“About?”
“What we’d been arguing. I told you that day I’d never had a chance
to talk over affairs with an American like you; and I hadn’t later.
“You see,” he explained after a moment of thought, “it seemed to me
that the other people I met at home--or most of them, anyway--went
into the war as a sort of social event. I don’t mean that they made
light of it; they didn’t. They were heart and soul in the cause; and
a good many of them did a lot of real work. But they didn’t react to
any--original ideas, as far as I could make out. They imported their
opinions and sympathies. And the ones who were hottest to have
America in the war weren’t the people who’d been most of their lives
in America; but the ones who’d been in England or France. I told you
that day that what they said was just what I’d been hearing on the
other side.”
In spite of the canvas shield, it was very cold where they were
standing. Gerry moved a bit as he talked; and Ruth stepped with him,
letting him lead her to a door which he opened, to discover a little
writing room or card room which happened to be deserted just then.
He motioned to her to precede him; and when she sat down upon one of
the upholstered chairs fixed before a table, he took the place
opposite, tossing his cap away and loosening his coat. She
unbuttoned her coat and pulled off her heavy gloves. She had made no
reply, and he seemed to expect none, but to be satisfied with her
waiting.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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