She unhooked her skirt and let it slip down to a circular heap about her feet. She wondered if the girl who would, in some ways, do better than herself were as lithely built as she. Mrs. Collingham had likened her to--oh, what was it? It was a spire. It sounded like a chapel. She had tossed it off as something that everybody knew about. So she had tossed off other names, taking it for granted that Jennie would have them at her fingers' ends.
The more she pondered the more sure of it she became--that she and her kind were poor and helpless chiefly because they wouldn't take the trouble to be otherwise. Not to stray from the childish, the sentimental, and the obvious gave them the relief she found in returning to the lingo she had always used with Wray.
She had used it with Bob, too--only, with Bob she had used it differently. Perhaps it was he who had used it differently. Between her and Wray, it had never been more than the medium of chaff, except on those occasions when it had become the vehicle of a half-acknowledged passion. Bob had tried to say something with it, even when slangy or colloquial. He had treated her as if she was worth talking to. He had tried to make her feel that she could talk on better themes than any they ever broached.
Poor Bob--sailing away to the south, thinking that where he left her there he would find her! Little he knew! If he could only see her now! If he could only dream of what she would be doing in ten minutes' time! If he only....
Something made her shudder. She felt cold. Perhaps the wind had changed outside, as it often did in May. She stooped, picked up her skirt, and mechanically hooked it round her. Still feeling chilled, she crossed her arms and hugged herself. A minute or two later she had put on her blouse and her jacket. She meant to take them off again as soon as she stopped shivering. Already Hubert would be cursing her delay.
She thought of the light in his eyes when she told him that, after all, she had come to pose. The memory of it made her heart jump again, with a great, single throb. It was the cave man's light. She never saw it in Bob's, and never would. Bob's eyes were twinkling and kind. She didn't suppose she would ever see such kind eyes in anyone else. If kindness were what she wanted....