II.
Tom Squires had guessed from Annie’s extremely kind and detached manner of the afternoon that he had failed to interest her. He had promised himself that in such an eventuality he would drop the matter, but now he found himself in no such humor. He did not want to marry her; he simply wanted to see her and be with her a little; and up to the moment of her sweetly casual, half passionate, yet wholly unemotional kiss, giving her up would have been easy, for he was past the romantic age; but since that kiss the thought of her made his heart move up a few inches in his chest and beat there steady and fast.
“But this is the time to get out,” he said to himself. “My age; no possible right to force myself into her life.”
He rubbed himself dry, brushed his hair before the mirror, and, as he
