One of the results of his absorbed mood was that he greeted Aline with a stare of an even glassier quality than usual. His eyes were by nature a trifle prominent; and to Aline, in the overstrung condition in which her talk with George Emerson had left her, they seemed to bulge at her like a snail’s. A man seldom looks his best in bed, and to Aline, seeing him for the first time at this disadvantage, the Honorable Freddie seemed quite repulsive. It was with a feeling of positive panic that she wondered whether he would want her to kiss him.
Freddie made no such demand. He was not one of your demonstrative lovers. He contented himself with rolling over in bed and dropping his lower jaw.
“Hello, Aline!”
Aline sat down on the edge of the bed.
“Well, Freddie?”
Her betrothed improved his appearance a little by hitching up his jaw. As though feeling that would be too extreme a measure, he did not close his mouth altogether; but he diminished the abyss. The Honorable Freddie belonged to the class of persons who move through life with their mouths always restfully open.
It seemed to Aline that on this particular afternoon a strange dumbness had descended on her. She had been unable to speak to George and now she could not think of anything to say to Freddie. She looked at him and he looked at her; and the clock on the mantel-piece went on ticking.
“It was that bally cat of Aunt Ann’s,” said Freddie at length, essaying light conversation. “It came legging it up the stairs and I took the most frightful toss. I hate cats! Do you hate cats? I knew a fellow in London who couldn’t stand cats.”
Aline began to wonder whether there was not something permanently wrong with her organs of speech. It should have been a simple matter to develop the cat theme, but she found herself unable to do so. Her mind was concentrated, to the exclusion of all else, on the repellent nature of the spectacle provided by her loved one in pyjamas. Freddie resumed the conversation.
“I was just reading a corking book. Have you ever read these things? They come out every month, and they’re corking. The fellow who writes them must be a corker. It beats me how he thinks of these things. They are about a detective–a chap called Gridley Quayle. Frightfully exciting!”
An obvious remedy for dumbness struck Aline.
“Shall I read to you, Freddie?”
“Right-ho! Good scheme! I’ve got to the top of this page.”
Aline took the paper-covered book.
“‘Seven guns covered him with deadly precision.’ Did you get as far as that?”
“Yes; just beyond. It’s a bit thick, don’t you know! This chappie Quayle has been trapped in a lonely house, thinking he was going to see a pal in distress; and instead of the pal there pop out a whole squad of masked blighters with guns. I don’t see how he’s going to get out of it, myself; but I’ll bet he does. He’s a corker!”
If anybody could have pitied Aline more than she pitied herself, as she waded through the adventures of Mr. Quayle, it would have been Ashe Marson. He had writhed as he wrote the words and she writhed as she read them. The Honorable Freddie also writhed, but with tense excitement.
“What’s the matter? Don’t stop!” he cried as Aline’s voice ceased.
“I’m getting hoarse, Freddie.”
Freddie hesitated. The desire to remain on the trail with Gridley struggled with rudimentary politeness.
“How would it be–Would you mind if I just took a look at the rest of it myself? We could talk afterward, you know. I shan’t be long.”
“Of course! Do read if you want to. But do you really like this sort of thing, Freddie?”
“Me? Rather! Why–don’t you?”
“I don’t know. It seems a little–I don’t know.”
Freddie had become absorbed in his story. Aline did not attempt further analysis of her attitude toward Mr. Quayle; she relapsed into silence.
It was a silence pregnant with thought. For the first time in their relations, she was trying to visualize to herself exactly what marriage with this young man would mean. Hitherto, it struck her, she had really seen so little of Freddie that she had scarcely had a chance of examining him. In the crowded world outside he had always seemed a tolerable enough person. To-day, somehow, he was different. Everything was different to-day.