On the last day of the six months Murchison presented himself before
Gina, and without embarrassment, and also without fervor, requested to
know his fate. He was greatly displeased with Gina’s conduct on this
occasion. She wished to be indefinite; she wished neither to take him
nor to leave him, but to keep him in reserve.
“You know how fond I am of you, Robert,” she said.
“No,” he replied, “I don’t. My question was just, as you might say, to
determine that point.”
“Sometimes I think that, on account of the children, I shouldn’t marry
again,” she said tentatively.
“That’s for you to say. You ought to know,” he remarked.
“I suppose at my age, I ought!”
He bowed stiffly. There came to Gina the recollection of what Dr.
Walters had said. He had assured her that she was like a young girl.
“You’ve never grown up,” he had told her. “You never will.”
“I’m afraid, Robert,” she said, “that I never could make you happy.”
He turned away, and was silent for some time.
“That’s for you to say,” he repeated. “You ought to know your own mind.”
His chief purpose was to avoid showing how horribly wounded and bereft
he was. So valiantly did he conceal his hurt that Gina herself was
offended and angered by his high spirits.
“I believe he’s glad!” she thought. “He’s delighted to get out of it!”
She forgot entirely how she had lain awake at night, planning some way
to tell Robert that she couldn’t marry him. On that night she lay awake
marveling at his treachery. She had decided that he didn’t really care.
On the evening of his next visit she had Dr. Walters there. She had the
doctor’s superior devotion on exhibition, and encouraged him to be
incredibly gallant and tender. He did his part admirably, but Murchison
failed her. He was pleasant, unusually pleasant and talkative, and he
gave no more sign of being a disappointed suitor than if he were her
grandfather. He made a most favorable impression upon Dr. Walters.
Before he left, he did something which enraged Gina.
“Will you not sing ‘Old Dog Tray’?” he asked blandly. “It is a great
favorite with me.”
She refused, but Dr. Walters joined his entreaties to Murchison’s, and
she had to yield. So she sang the simple old ballad with burning cheeks;
and while she sang it, there sat Robert, smoking his pipe in wooden
silence.