wondering interest as if he were suddenly curious to hear what they were saying, to watch their expressions and to study their gestures and their clothes. She decided that he had outgrown his boyish love affair, and she was at once relieved and disappointed. She found him rather a stupid youth.
He was, in fact, alternating between the exalted moods to which the music lifted him, and a puzzled return to the consciousness of his surroundings. At one moment, he was alone with Margaret in the gropings and longings of his doubts of life. At another, he was sitting among these curious fellow-humans who seemed to move in a small circle of light surrounded by the mysterious darknesses of their origin and their destiny, talking of nothing, smiling at nothing, and apparently unconscious of anything but what was before their eyes.
When he rose with them to say good-night, they seemed to close in on him and separate him from her; and it was as if across their interference that he reached her hand for a moment and held it while he caught the meaning of her smile. A slight pressure of friendliness seemed to reward him for the evening apart. Then Conroy came between them with a laughing "You'll not forget?"—and he backed away. Miss Kimball dismissed him with a contemptuous smile that stung him into a startled examination of his conduct toward her; Mrs. Richardson did not say good-night to him at all; and while he was waiting for Conroy on the porch, the two men came out, laughing and talking, and passed him over with a glance.
