But now in perfect innocence,
thinking only to pass along an interesting bit of information, she
had crushed Bill as effectively as if she had used a club for that
purpose.
'I'm tickled to death about it,' she went on, as it were over her
hearer's prostrate body. It was I who brought them together, you
know. I wrote telling Claire to come out here on the _Atlantic,_
knowing that Dudley was sailing on that boat. I had an idea they
would hit it off together. Dudley fell for her right away, and she
must have fallen for him, for they had only known each other
for a few weeks when they came and told me they were engaged.
It happened last Sunday.'
'Last Sunday!'
It had seemed to Bill a moment before that he would never again be
capable of speech, but this statement dragged the words out of
him. Last Sunday! Why, it was last Sunday that Claire had broken
off her engagement with him!
'Last Sunday at nine o'clock in the evening, with a full moon
shining and soft music going on off-stage. Real third-act stuff.'
Bill felt positively dizzy. He groped back in his memory for
facts. He had gone out for his walk after dinner. They had dined
at eight. He had been walking some time. Why, in Heaven's name,
this was the quickest thing in the amatory annals of civilization!
His brain was too numbed to work out a perfectly accurate
schedule, but it looked as if she must have got engaged to this
Pickering person before she met him, Bill, in the road that night.
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