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Evylyn looked appealingly at her brother-in-law, but before he could intercede a thick mumble had come crowding out of Tom Lowrie, hindered by the dead cigar which he gripped firmly with his teeth. "Huma uma ho huma ahdy um " "What?" demanded Harold earnestly.
Evylyn saw Tom lurch forward and put his hand on Ahearns shoulder and suddenly she was listening to a new, anxious voice at her elbow, and, turning, found Hilda, the second maid. "Please, Mis' Piper, I tank Yulie got her hand poisoned. It's all swole up and her cheeks is hot and she's moanin' an' groanin' " "Julie is?" Evylyn asked sharply. The party suddenly receded.
"Evie, dear," he said, bending and putting his arms about her, "I hope you're not thinking about last night " She moved close to him, trembling. "I know," he continued, "it was just an imprudent friendship on your part. We all make mistakes." Evylyn hardly heard him. She was wondering if by sheer clinging to him she could draw him out and up the stairs.
He had told Evylyn that he considered the subject closed and would never reproach her nor allude to it in any form; and he told himself that this was rather a big way of looking at it that she was not a little impressed. Yet, like all men who are preoccupied with their own broadness, he was exceptionally narrow. He greeted Evylyn with emphasized cordiality this evening.
He turned as if to jump again at Gedney, stopped, his muscles visibly relaxed, and he gave a bitter little laugh. "You people you people " Evylyn's arms were around him and her eyes were pleading with him frantically, but he pushed her away and sank dazed into a kitchen chair, his face like porcelain. "You've been doing things to me, Evylyn. Why, you little devil! You little DEVIL!"
Only Ahearn and Milton Piper seemed unaffected. "It's a pretty fine town, Ahearn," said Ambler, "you'll find that." "I've found it so," said Ahearn pleasantly. "You find it more, Ahearn," said Harold, nodding emphatically "'f I've an'thin' do 'th it." He soared into a eulogy of the city, and Evylyn wondered uncomfortably if it bored every one as it bored her. Apparently not.
His eyes, grown suddenly pitiful, struck a deep, unsounded chord in Evylyn and simultaneously a furious anger surged in her. She felt her eyelids burning; she stamped her foot violently; her hands scurried nervously over the table as if searching for a weapon, and then she flung herself wildly at Gedney.
"No," said Evylyn slowly, "but I know where the letter is. Go 'way, Martha. I know." Wonderingly, Martha withdrew, and still Evylyn sat there, only the muscles around her eyes moving contracting and relaxing and contracting again. She knew now where the letter was she knew as well as if she had put it there herself. And she felt instinctively and unquestionably what the letter was.
"It was waitin' on the floor while I polished the sideboard, and Julie come along an' went to foolin' with it. She yust scratch herself." Evylyn frowned heavily at Hilda, and twisting Julie decisively in her lap, began tearing strips of the handkerchief. "Now let's see it, dear." Julie held it up and Evelyn pounced. "There!" Julie surveyed her swathed thumb doubtfully. She crooked it; it waggled.
With its massive, brooding passivity it lay there in the centre of her house as it had lain for years, throwing out the ice-like beams of a thousand eyes, perverse glitterings merging each into each, never aging, never changing. Evylyn sat down on the edge of the table and stared at it fascinated.
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