“Wally …” Her voice broke. “It’s impossible.”
“Because …” He seemed to find a difficulty in speaking, “Because of Underhill?”
Jill nodded. She felt wretched. The monstrous incongruity of her surroundings oppressed her. The orchestra dashed into a rollicking melody, which set her foot tapping in spite of herself. At a near-by table somebody was shouting with laughter. Two waiters at a service-stand were close enough for her to catch snatches of their talk. They were arguing about an order of fried potatoes. Once again her feelings veered round, and she loathed the detachment of the world. Her heart ached for Wally. She could not look at him, but she knew exactly what she would see if she did,—honest, pleading eyes searching her face for something which she could not give.
The table creaked. Wally was leaning further forward. He seemed like something large and pathetic,—a big dog in trouble. She hated to be hurting him. And all the time her foot tapped accompaniment to the rag-time tune.
“But you can’t live all your life with a memory,” said Wally.
Jill turned and faced him. His eyes seemed to leap at her, and they were just as she had pictured them.
“You don’t understand,” she said gently. “You don’t understand.”
“You can’t still love him, after what has happened!”
The words seemed to bewilder Wally as much as they had bewildered Freddie.
Jill shut her eyes tight. Wally quivered. It was a trick she had had as a child. In perplexity, she had always screwed up her eyes just like that, as if to shut herself up in herself.
“Don’t talk for a minute, Wally,” she said. “I want to think.”
“It’s like this,” she said. He had seen her look at him exactly the same way a hundred times. “I don’t suppose I can make you understand, but this is how it is. Suppose you had a room, and it was full of things. Furniture. And there wasn’t any space left. You—you couldn’t put anything else in till you had taken all that out, could you? It might not be worth anything, but it would still be there taking up all the room.”
“My heart’s full, Wally dear. I know it’s just lumber that’s choking it up, but it’s difficult to get it out. It takes time getting it out. I put it in, thinking it was wonderful furniture, the most wonderful in the world, and—I was cheated. It was just lumber. But it’s there. It’s still there. It’s there all the time. And what am I to do?”