"'Oh, she doesn't, eh ?" said Nora enigmatically.
"She doesn't?" He studied her face with an abrupt, miserable suspicion, but he repeated doggedly: " No, she doesn't.""Ahem," replied Nora. " Why, she's set her cap for him all right. She's after him for certain. It's as plain as day. Can't you see that, stupidity ?""No," he said hoarsely.
"You are a fool," said Nora. " It isn't Coleman that's after her. It is she that is after Coleman."Coke was mulish. " No such thing. Coleman's crazy about her. Everybody has known it ever since he was in college. You ask any of the other fellows."Nora was now very serious, almost doleful. She remained still for a time, casting at Coke little glances of hatred. " I don't see my way clear to ask any of the other fellows," she said at last, with considerable bitterness. " I'm not in the habit of conducting such enquiries."Coke felt now that he disliked her, and he read plainly her dislike of him. If they were the two villains of the play, they were not having fun together at all. Each had some kind of a deep knowledge that their aspirations, far from colliding, were of such character that the success of one would mean at least assistance to the other, but neither could see how to confess if. Pethapt it was from shame, perhaps it was because Nora thought Coke to have little wit ;perhaps it was because Coke thought Nora to have little conscience. Their talk was mainly rudderless.
From time to time Nora had an inspiration to come boldly at the point, but this inspiration was commonly defeated by, some extraordinary manifestation of Coke's incapacity. To her mind, then, it seemed like a proposition to ally herself to a butcher-boy in a matter purely sentimental. She Wondered indignantly how she was going to conspire With this lad, who puffed out his infantile cheeks in order to conceitedly demonstrate that he did not understand the game at all. She hated Marjory for it. Evidently it was only the weaklings who fell in love with that girl.
Coleman was an exception, but then, Coleman was misled, by extraordinary artifices. She meditatecf for a moment if she should tell Coke to go home and not bother her. What at last decided the question was his unhappiness. Shd clung to this unhappiness for its value as it stood alone, and because its reason for existence was related to her own unhappiness. " You Say you are not going back toAthens with your party.
I don't suppose you're going to stay here. I'm going back to Athens to-day. I came up here to see a battle, but it doesn't seem that there are to be any more battles., The fighting will now all be on the other side of'the mountains." Apparent she had learned in some haphazard way that the Greek peninsula was divided by a spine of almost inaccessible mountains, and the war was thus split into two simultaneous campaigns. The Arta campaign was known to be ended. "If you want to go back to Athens without consorting with your friends, you had better go back with me. I can take you in my carriage as far as the beginning of the railroad. Don't you worry.
You've got money enough, haven't you ? The pro-fessor isn't keeping your money ?"
"Yes," he said slowly, "I've got money enough."He was apparently dubious over the proposal.
In their abstracted walk they had arrived in front of the house occupied by Coleman and the Wainwright party. Two carriages, forlorn in dusty age, stood be-fore the door. Men were carrying out new leather luggage and flinging it into the traps amid a great deal of talk which seemed to refer to nothing. Nora and Coke stood looking at the scene without either thinking of the importance of running away, when out tumbled seven students, followed immediately but in more decorous fashion by the Wainwrights and Coleman.
Some student set up a whoop. " Oh, there he is.
There's Coke. Hey, Coke, where you been? Here he is, professor."For a moment after the hoodlum had subsided, the two camps stared at each other in silence.