Then she looked down. The ring was on her finger still, not on his.
And he was not a vision. He was a human man, a man she knew and
loved. And he did not smile at her this time, as the vision would
have done, in a quizzical, stranger-friendly fashion, and stand
still. He was over at her side in one swift step, and he had both
her hands tight, as if they belonged to him, and he was talking to
her in a loving, scolding voice, as people only talk to you when you
belong to them and they to you.
"Joy! You very naughty little girl, to run away this way!"
For a minute she only wanted to cling to his hands and tell him how
glad--how glad she was to see him, and how nothing else in the whole
beautiful world mattered at all. But she remembered she mustn't.
"You told Gail. You might have known she'd shame me before everybody
if she could. She doesn't care.... Oh, John, how could you?"
She held on to him hard for comfort even while she was reproaching him.
He looked down at her in the half-light, then, as if he was fairly
content with what he saw in her face, closed the door behind him.
They could still see each other enough to talk.
"Next time give me a little more benefit of the doubt, my dear. _I
never told Gail anything_!"
When John told you anything it was so. That was all there was to
_that_. She gave a gasp of blessed relief.
"But--" she protested. "But Gail knew----"
He sat down on the step below her.
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