She saw him as he limped round the corner at the very end of the street. He wore a Panama hat and a white-linen suit. Luckily, Gussie and Gladys had gone back to work and her mother was lying down. She couldn't have borne the suspense had she not been all alone. Even Pansy's searching eyes, as she stood with her little squat legs planted wide apart, trying to understand this new element in the situation, were almost more than Jennie could endure.
Bob advanced slowly, examining the numbers of the houses, many of which were lacking. Seventeen, Fifteen, and Thirteen were, however, over their doors, so that he was duly prepared for Eleven.
"I'll know by the first look in his eyes," she kept saying to herself, "whether he's sorry he married me or not."
As he passed number Thirteen she got up from the arm of the big chair on which she had been perched, and found she could hardly stand. It was all she could do to creep into the entry and open the front door. When he turned into the little cement strip leading up to it, she shrank back into the shadow. He was abreast of the two hydrangea trees before he saw her. When he did so he stood still. It seemed to her that an unreckonable time went by before a smile stole to his lips, and when it did it was wavering, flickering, more poignant than no smile at all.
Her inner comment was: "Yes; he's sorry. Now I know." Pride, another new force in her character, made of her a woman with a will, as she added, "I must help him to get out of it--somehow."
But Pansy, sensing a nimbus of good will as imperceptible to Jennie as the pervasive scent of the summer, lilted down the steps, raised her forepaws against his shin, and gazed up into his face adoringly.
It was a help to Bob Collingham that his first glance at Jennie decided his attitude for the near future. Whatever his doubts and questionings, he could add nothing to the trials she had to face. Whatever she had done, whatever the net of circumstances in which she had been caught, he must act as if, as far as he himself was concerned, he was satisfied. Whether she loved him or whether she didn't, or whether her duties as a model had or had not made her indifferent to considerations to which most people were sensitive, were questions that must be postponed.