"You may, if you think it will do you any good. But I don't see why."

The general smiled, but with a kind of tremulous eagerness which might
have been pathetic to any one who liked him. "Do you know this is almost
the first time I have spoken alone with you?"

"Really, I hadn't noticed," said Mrs. Adding.

General Triscoe laughed in rather a ghastly way. "Well, that's
encouraging, at least, to a man who's had his doubts whether it wasn't
intended."

"Intended? By whom? What do you mean, General Triscoe? Why in the world
shouldn't you have spoken alone with me before?"

He was not, with all his eagerness, ready to say, and while she smiled
pleasantly she had the look in her eyes of being brought to bay and being
prepared, if it must come to that, to have the worst over, then and
there. She was not half his age, but he was aware of her having no
respect for his years; compared with her average American past as he
understood it, his social place was much higher, but, she was not in the
least awed by it; in spite of his war record she was making him behave
like a coward. He was in a false position, and if he had any one but
himself to blame he had not her. He read her equal knowledge of these
facts in the clear eyes that made him flush and turn his own away.

Then he started with a quick "Hello!" and stood staring up at the steps
from the terrace above, where Rose Adding was staying himself weakly by a
clutch of Kenby on one side and March on the other.