“Do try to come once in a while, though,” she responded, gazing about the room in a way that gave her speech a perfunctory character.  That, at any rate, was the impression made upon Lee; and he continued to puzzle his brain as to what underlay it all—­what motive, what object.  At the same time he was sickened by the suave interest she pretended, by her shallow insincerity.  “I’ve wondered if I could be of any help here to you,” she went on.  But a sharp movement on his part caused her to say, “Still, I know a man doesn’t like a girl messing up his work.  That’s one reason I’ve been careful not to propose it before, or even to make the demands on your time that some girls would have made.  I’ll be glad when the project is out of the way; then we can begin to plan for ourselves.”  She cast her eyes upward at space.  “There are lots of things to decide—­where to live, and so on.  You come soon and we’ll set some of them down on paper for consideration.”

Lee could not escape that feeling of perfunctoriness in her twitter of talk.  It went no further than that, however; he had no chagrin or repugnance or anger at the thin duplicity, not even at her complacent confidence in his stupidity and infatuation.  For to count on his being blind to the past and deluded by her words, she could only believe him both stupid and infatuated.  He was quite calm.  His actual state of mind was, more than anything else, one of detachment.  He imagined that he had come to a point where she was incapable of arousing in him any kind of sentiment or passion.

Presently she took up her furs and walked humming about the office as she adjusted them.

“I’d like to stay all day, but must be going,” she said.  “Imo and I were wondering, by the way, if you could send us a man with some tar-paper to line our cabins.”

“Of course.  I’ll send him after dinner.  And he can chop you some wood and bring your water.”

She stood for a little examining a blue-print tacked on the wall.

“That’s like the one Mr. Gretzinger sometimes carries,” she remarked.  “I suppose he’ll be returning one of these days.  Not that it matters; he was tiresome at times, like Charlie Menocal.”  She studied the lines of the map attentively.  “He appeared anxious to get to New York.  Said something about a sweetheart there.  You’ll be glad if he doesn’t come back to bother you again, won’t you, Lee dear?” She swung about, laughing.

“Oh, he’ll show up.”

“I wasn’t sure; he said he thought not.”

Lee emptied and put away his pipe.

“He’ll come,” was his assured reply.

“Then he must have been ‘kidding’ me.”

Her thoughtful air returned.  She picked a raveling from her sleeve, and stroked her fur, and inspected the tips of her gloves, and untied and retied the strings of her cap—­all with an inscrutable face.  Then suddenly her mind appeared to be made up.

“Well, dear, run and bring your car and we’ll pick up Imogene,” she said, giving him a quick pat on the cheek.