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"It's a little loose.... You don't wish me to wear it, do you?... Your father's? I'd rather not.... Do you really wish it? Well, then for a day if you ask me." Her ringed hand settled unconsciously into his again; she leaned back against the tree, and he rested his head beside hers. "Are you afraid of wood-ticks, Mr. Hamil? I am, horribly.
"I don't see how you found out " "Found out! What perfectly revolting vanity! Do you suppose that the moment I left you I rushed home and began to make happy and incoherent inquiries? Mr. Hamil, you disappoint me every time you speak and also every time you don't." "I seem to be doomed." "You are. You can't help it. Tell me as inoffensively as possible are you here to begin your work?"
She said: "I know he cared a great deal for you." The man was silent. She turned directly toward him, pale, clear-eyed, and in the poise of her head a faint touch of pride. "Please do not misunderstand his friendship for me, then. If you were his friend I would not need to say this. He was very kind to me, Mr. Hamil." "I do not doubt it," said Hamil gravely. "And you do not mistake, what I say?"
"Yes firmer ground, Mr. Hamil." He released her chilled hands, swung around, and took a thoughtful step or two. "Firmer, safer ground," he repeated. "Once you said to me, 'Let us each enjoy our own griefs unmolested." He laughed. "Didn't you say that years ago?" "Yes." "And I replied years ago that I had no griefs to enjoy.
Sensitiveness and humiliation have strained the better qualities out of me. I've been bruised dry." He leaned on his elbows, hands clasped, looking out into the sunlight where myriads of brilliant butterflies were fluttering over the carpet of white phlox. "Hamil," he said, "whatever is harsh, aggressive, cynical, mean, sneering, selfish in me has been externally acquired.
He flushed up so vividly that she winced, then added quickly: "I didn't mean that, Mr. Hamil; I knew you were worth it when I did it." "The worst of it is that I am not," he said. "I'm like everybody who has been through college and chooses a profession for love of it.
"Well, we're going to try an old English receipt on those trout," he began cheerfully and stopped short at sight of Hamil's face. "What's the matter?" he asked bluntly. "Nothing." Hamil returned to his chair and picked up a book; Portlaw looked at him for a moment, then, perplexed, sorted his mail and began to open the envelopes.
A few minutes later Hamil found Shiela Cardross surrounded by her inevitable entourage a jolly, animated circle hemming her in with Malcourt at her left and Van Tassel Cuyp on her right; and he halted on the circle's edge to look and listen, glancing askance at Malcourt with a curiosity unaccustomed.
Classon and Colonel Vetchen wafted Virginia up the steps. Cuyp lingered to venture a heavy pleasantry or two which distorted his long nose into a series of white-ridged wrinkles, then he ambled away and disappeared within the abode of that divinity who shapes our ends, the manicure; and Hamil turned once more toward the gardens.
Hamil was aware of considerable noise, more or less musical, afloat and ashore; a pretentious orchestra played third-rate music under the hotel colonnade; melody arose from the lantern-lit lake, with clamourous mandolins and young voices singing; and over all hung the confused murmur of unseen throngs, harmonious, capricious; laughter, voice answering voice, and the distant shouts as brilliantly festooned boats hailed and were hailed across the water.
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