He tells her so, with perfect sincerity--and she
believes it." Rose enjoyed the look in Gertrude's face as she listened
to that.
It was half past six or thereabout when they left the studio, and the
late May afternoon was at its loveliest. It was the sort of day, as
Rodney said, that convicted you, the minute you came out of it, of
abysmal folly in having wasted any of it indoors.
"I want to walk," said Rose, "after that tea, if I'm ever to want any
dinner."
He nodded a little absently, she thought, and fell in step beside her.
There was no mention at any time, of their destination.
It was a good while before Rose got the key to his preoccupation. They
had turned into the park at Sixty-sixth Street, and were half-way over
to the Fifth Avenue corner at Fifty-ninth, before he spoke out.
"On a day like this," he said, "to have sat there for two or three
mortal hours arguing about stale ideas! Threshing over the straw--almost
as silly an occupation as chess--when we might have been out here, being
alive! But it must have seemed natural to you to hear me going on like
that.
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