Quicksand
It was, he had said, awfully good of her to see him. She instantly protested. No, she had wanted to see him. He looked at her surprised. “You know, Helga,” he had begun with an air of desperation, “I can‘t forgive myself for acting such a swine at the Tavenors‘ party. I don‘t at all blame you for being angry and not speaking to me except when you had to.”
But that, she exclaimed, was simply too ridiculous. “I wasn‘t angry a bit.” And it had seemed to her that things were not exactly going forward as they should. It seemed that he had been very sincere, and very formal. Deliberately. She had looked down at her hands and inspected her bracelets, for she had felt that to look at him would be, under the circumstances, too exposing.
“I was afraid,” he went on, “that you might have misunderstood; might have been unhappy about it. I could kick myself. It was, it must have been, Tavenor‘s rotten cocktails.”
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