It came back to him
that they had parted that afternoon, for the first time, on definitely
hostile terms.
He decided to ignore the fact. Something told him that Ruth had not
forgotten, but it might be that cheerfulness now would blot out the
resentment of past irritability.
But in his embarrassment he was more than cheerful. As Steve had been
on the occasion of his visit to old John Bannister, he was breezy,
breezy with an effort that was as painful to Ruth as it was to himself,
breezy with a horrible musical comedy breeziness.
He could have adopted no more fatal tone with Ruth at that moment. All
the afternoon she had been a complicated tangle of fretted nerves. Her
quarrel with Kirk, Bailey's visit, a conscience that would not lie down
and go to sleep at her orders, but insisted on running riot--all these
things had unfitted her to bear up amiably under sudden, self-conscious
breeziness.
And the heat of the day, charged now with the oppressiveness of
long-overdue thunder, completed her mood. When Kirk came in and began
to speak, the softest notes of the human voice would have jarred upon
her. And Kirk, in his nervousness, was almost shouting.
His voice rang through the room, and Ruth winced away from it like a
stricken thing. From out of the hell of nerves and heat and interfering
brothers there materialized itself, as she sat there, a very vivid
hatred of Kirk.
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