THE AMATEUR LOVER
she whispered. "It's nothing much at all. I just wanted to say that considering how strong they are, and how wild and strange I think men are very gentle creatures. Thank you." And in another instant she had gone back alone to face by crass daylight the tragedy that she had brought into three people's lives.
Certainly in all the days and weeks that followed, Drew never failed to qualify as a "gentle creature." Not a day passed at his office that he did not tele- phone home with the most casual-sounding pleas antry, Is everything all right? Any burnt-bridge smoke in the air?" Usually, clear as his own voice, and sometimes even with a little giggle tucked on at the end, the answer came,"Yes, everything's all right." But now and then over that telephone wire a minor note flashed with unmistakably trem ulous vibration : " N-o, Drew. Oh, could you come right home and take me somewhere?"
Drew's brown cheeks hollowed a bit, perhaps, as time went on, but always smilingly, always frankly and jocosely, he met the occasionally recurrent emergencies of his love-life. Underneath his smile and underneath his frankness his original purpose never flinched and never wavered. With growing mental intimacy and absolute emotional aloofness he forced day by day the image and the conscious
ness of his personality upon the girl's plastic mind :
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