"People think I am--but it's
merely the looseness of these clothes. There's really
no difference since I was here last."
The glance they exchanged was so full of the tacit comment
that this last visit was a long time ago, that Thorpe put
it into words. "Let's see--that was just before Christmas,
wasn't it?" he said.
"Something like that," she responded. "You were going
to get married in a week or two, I remember, and THAT
was in January, wasn't it? I was taking stock, I know."
He nodded in turn. The thought that his only sister recalled
his marriage merely as a date, like a royal anniversary
or a bank-holiday, and held herself implacably aloof from
all contact with his domestic life, annoyed him afresh.
"You're an awful goat, not to come near us," he felt impelled,
in brotherly frankness, to tell her.
She put out her lips, and wagged her head a little,
in a gesture which it flashed across him his own mirror
might often have recorded. "I thought that was all settled
and done with long ago," she said, moodily.
"Oh, I won't worry you with it, Lou," he observed,
with reassuring kindness of tone. "I never felt so much
like being nice to you in my life."
She seemed surprised at this, too, and regarded him
with a heavy new fixity of gaze. No verbal comment,
apparently, occurred to her.
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