He turned abruptly, grumbling, "Well, better get back to work now, I
guess."
Her cry was hungry: "Oh, please don't go." She was beside him, shyly
picking at his sleeve. "I know what you mean. I like you for being so
understanding. But---- I do like you. You were the perfect companion.
Let's---- Oh, let's have a walk--and try to laugh again."
He definitely did not want to stay. At this moment he did not love her.
He regarded her as an estimable young woman who, for a person so
idiotically reared, had really shown a good deal of pluck out on the
road--where he wanted to be. He stood in the hall disliking his old cap
while she ran up to put on a top coat.
Mute, casual, they tramped out of the house together, and down the hill
to a region of shabby old brown houses like blisters on the hillside.
They had little to say, and that little was a polite reminiscence of
incidents in which neither was interested.
When they came back to the Gilson hedge, he stopped at the gate, with
terrific respectableness removed his cap.
"Good night," she said cheerily. "Call me up soon again."
He did not answer "Good night." He said "Good-by"; and he meant it to be
his last farewell. He caught her hand, hastily dropped it, fled down the
hill.
He was, he told himself, going to leave Seattle that evening.
That, doubtless, is the reason why he ran to a trolley, to get to a
department-store before it closed; and why, precipitating himself upon a
startled clerk, he purchased a new suit of chaste blue serge, a new pair
of tan boots (curiously like some he had seen on the university campus
that morning) and a new hat so gray and conservative and felty that it
might have been worn by Woodrow Wilson.
He spent the evening in reading algebra and geometry, and in telling
himself that he was beautifully not thinking about Claire.
In the midst of it, he caught himself at it, and laughed.
"What you're doing, my friend, is pretending you don't like Claire, so
that you can hide from your fool self the fact that you're going to
sneak back to see her the first chance you get--first time the watch-dog
is out. Seriously now, son, Claire is impossible for you. No can do. Now
that you've been chump enough to leave home---- Oh Lord, I wish I
hadn't promised to take this room for all winter. Wish I hadn't
matriculated at the U. But I'm here now, and I'll stick it out. I'll
stay here one year anyway, and go back home. Oh! And to---- By Golly!
She liked me!"
He was thinking of the wild-rose teacher to whom he had given a lift
back in Dakota. He was remembering her daintiness, her admiration.