“All right. If you’ll only wait a little this afternoon till I’m free, Petra, I’d like the pleasure of driving you out to Meadowbrook. I want you to finish about Teresa. Of course, you know that.”
“Dick’s driving me out.” But as Petra saw Doctor Pryne’s disappointment, she said quickly almost the precise words she had said earlier to Dick, “But it wouldn’t pay you, anyway, even if he wasn’t. Clare is giving a big dinner party to-night and she’ll be busy seeing to things. She does the flowers herself, cuts them and everything. It takes simply hours.”
“Good Lord! What has Mrs. Farwell’s cutting the flowers to do with it? It is you I want to talk to. When will you finish about Teresa, then? You said when we were alone next. And will you take me to see her? I have been looking forward to seeing her again ever since our talk—at the guest house.”
Lewis saw the look of deviousness creep over Petra’s face then, and he knew, almost certainly, that whatever she said next would have no reality in it. She was baffling to exasperation.
“I’ll take you to see Teresa if she invites you. But there’s nothing more to tell you, really. Only I beg you not to mention her to Clare again, not to tell her any more of all that I told you. I don’t know how much you did tell her. She hasn’t said a word about it and I haven’t asked. But you won’t again, will you?”
“My dear! That was a stupid slip I made. I broke my promise of secrecy. But why should I talk about anything with Mrs. Farwell? It is you I am trying to talk with—and you put me off. You don’t say anything _true_ to me any more.”
“What do you want to know? About Teresa, I mean? I’ve told you the absolute truth about her.”
“Yes, I know that—as far as it went. But I want the rest, all of it!” Lewis exclaimed. “What Teresa did next. You said she was ready to become a secretary and something happened. I want to know what happened, what she is doing now, how things are with her. I’ve been waiting days.”
But even before Petra opened her lips, Lewis gave up hope of her answering him truly. He saw her choosing between several possible answers. And when she said, deliberately, very carefully, “Teresa got her chance to go to college. She supports herself by dress-designing. She’s all right, thank you,” Lewis knew that while these might be facts, they weren’t the truth; they left him exactly where he had been left Saturday. He knew not one real thing more. The swordlike reticence in Petra’s gentian eyes guarded her against his knowing now every bit as effectively as against Clare’s, her father’s, and Dick’s. But Dick! Saturday Dick had seemed to stand with Clare and Farwell over against Petra’s guard. But had that, perhaps, changed? Certainly he was very much in evidence—lunching with Petra to-day, driving her out to-night. Lewis himself had been away four days. Anything could have happened in four days. Had Dick waked up, come to his senses?