He felt no resentment toward her. It was simply that she had gone
out of his life.
'Bill, I've been a fool.'
He made no reply to this for he could think of no reply that was
sufficiently polite. 'Yes?' sounded as if he meant to say that
that was just what he had expected. 'Really?' had a sarcastic
ring. He fell back on facial expression, to imply that he was
interested and that she might tell all.
Claire looked away down the road and began to speak in a low,
quick voice:
'I've been a fool all along. I lost you through being a fool. When
I saw you dancing with that girl in the restaurant I didn't stop
to think. I was angry. I was jealous. I ought to have trusted you,
but--Oh, well, I was a fool.'
'My dear girl, you had a perfect right--'
'I hadn't. I was an idiot. Bill, I've come to ask you if you can't
forgive me.'
'I wish you wouldn't talk like that--there's nothing to forgive.'
The look which Claire gave him in answer to this was meek and
affectionate, but inwardly she was wishing that she could bang his
head against the gate. His slowness was maddening. Long before
this he should have leaped into the road in order to fold her in
his arms. Her voice shook with the effort she had to make to keep
it from sharpness.
'I mean, is it too late? I mean, can you really forgive me? Oh,
Bill'--she stopped herself by the fraction of a second from adding
'you idiot'--'can't we be the same again to each other? Can't
we--pretend all this has never happened?'
Exasperating as Bill's wooden failure to play the scene in the
spirit in which her imagination had conceived it was to Claire,
several excuses may be offered for him: He had opened the evening
with a shattering blow at his faith in woman.
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