"I was reading Gibbon's 'Rome,'" she informed him. "I think every one
should know it. Don't you?"
"Good heavens, what for?" he inquired.
"I don't know." They looked at each other, and suddenly they laughed.
"I wanted to improve my mind," she explained. "I felt, last night, that
you-that you know so many things, and that I was frightfully stupid."
"Do you mean to say," he asked, aghast, "that I--! Great Scott!"
Settled in the living-room, they got back rather quickly to their status
of the night before, and he was moved to confession.
"I didn't really intend to wait until to-morrow," he said. "I got up
with the full intention of coming here to-day, if I did it over the
wreck of my practice. At eleven o'clock this morning I held up a
consultation ten minutes to go to Yardsleys and buy a tie, for this
express purpose. Perhaps you have noticed it already."
"I have indeed. It's a wonderful tie."
"Neat but not gaudy, eh?" He grinned at her, happily. "You know, you
might steer me a bit about my ties. I have the taste of an African
savage. I nearly bought a purple one, with red stripes. And Aunt Lucy
thinks I should wear white lawn, like David!"
They talked, those small, highly significant nothings which are only the
barrier behind which go on the eager questionings and unspoken answers
of youth and love. They had known each other for years, had exchanged
the same give and take of neighborhood talk when they met as now. To-day
nothing was changed, and everything.
Then, out of a clear sky, he said: "I may be going away before long, Elizabeth."
He was watching her intently. She had a singular feeling that behind
this, as behind everything that afternoon, was something not spoken.
Something that related to her. Perhaps it was because of his tone.
"You don't mean-not to stay?"
"No. I want to go back to Wyoming. Where I was born. Only for a few
weeks."
And in that "only for a few weeks" there lay some of the unspoken
things. That he would miss her and come back quickly to her. That she
would miss him, and that subconsciously he knew it. And behind that,
too, a promise. He would come back to her.
"Only for a few weeks," he repeated. "I thought perhaps, if you wouldn't
mind my writing to you, now and then--I write a rotten hand, you know.
Most medical men do."